^.- 


940.91 
tJ672 


.J 


\^\^^^W^^^^^^^^^^^^ 


n 


HI 


1 
1 
1 
i 


i 
i 


THE  LIBRARIES 


General  Library 


I 

i 


COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY      [H 

i 


[^nnin^niniipjijfrifgiiifiirrugn^ 


i 

i 


i 
i 


THE  MYTH  OF  A  GUILTY  NATION 


-'  * 


THE  MYTH  OF  A 

GUILTY   NATION 


BY 


ALBERT  JAY  NOCK 

("historicus") 


NEW  YORK  B.W.  HUEBSCH,  Inc.    mcmxxii 


COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY 
THE    FREEMAN,     Inc. 

COPYRIGHT,  1922,  BY 
B.    W.     HUEBSCH,    Inc. 


FEINTED    IN    TJ.    S.    A, 


o 


.J 


r  n 


PREFACE 

This  book  is  made  up  of  a  series  of  articles 
originally  published  in  the  Freeman.  It,_was 
compiled  to  establish  one  point  and  only  one, 
namely:  that  the  German  Government  was  not 
solely  guilty  of  bringing  on  the  war.  I  have  not 
been  at  all  concerned  with  measuring  the  Ger- 
man Government's  share  of  guilt,  with  trying  to 
show  that  it  was  either  great  or  small,  or  that 
it  was  either  less  or  more  than  that  of  any  other 
Government  or  association  of  Governmentsl  All 
this  is  beside  the  point.  I  do  not  by  any  means 
wish  to  escape  the  responsibility  of  saying  that 
I  think  the  German  Government's  share  of  guilt 
in  the  matter  is  extremely  small;  so  small  by 
comparison  with  that  of  the  major  Powers  allied 
against  Germany,  as  to  be  inconsiderable.  That 
is  my  belief,  demonstrable  as  I  think  by  such 
evidence  as  has  now  become  available  to  any 
candid  person.  But  this  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  subject-matter  of  this  volume.  If 
the  guilt  of  the  German  Government  could  be 

[5] 


proved  to  be  ten  times  greater  than  it  was  repre- 
sented to  be  by  the  publicity-bureaux  of  the 
Allied  Powers,  the  conclusion  established  in  the 
following  chapters  would  still  remain.  Guilty 
as  the  German  Government  may  have  been; 
multiply  by  ten  any  estimate  that  any  person,  in- 
terested or  disinterested,  informed  or  uninformed, 
may  put  upon  its  guilt;  the  fact  remains  that  it 
was  far,  very  far  indeed,  from  being  the  only 
guilty  party  concerned. 

If  there  were  no  practical  end  to  be  gained  by 
establishing  this  conclusion,  if  one's  purpose  were 
only  to  give  the  German  Government  the  dubious 
vindication  of  a  tu  quoque^  the  effort  would 
be  hardly  worth  making.  But  as  I  say  at  the  out- 
set, there  is  at  stake  an  extremely  important  mat^ 
ter,  one  that  will  unfavourably  affect  the  peace 
of  the  world  for  at  least  a  generation — the  treaty 
of  Versailles.  If  the  German  Government  may 
not  be  assumed  to  be  solely  responsible  for  the 
war,  this  treaty  is  indefensible;  for  it  is  con- 
structed wholly  upon  that  assumption.  It  be- 
comes, not  a  treaty,  but  a  verdict  pronounced 
after  the  manner  of  Brennus,  by  a  superior 
power  which,  without  regard  to  justice,  arrogates 
to  itself  the  functions  of  prosecutor,  jury  and 
judge. 

[6] 


It  is  probably  superfluous  to  point  out  that 
this  treaty,  conceived  in  the  pure  spirit  of  the 
victorious  Apache,  has,  in  practice,  utterly  broken 
down.  It  has  not  worked  and  it  will  not  work, 
because  it  sets  at  defiance  certain  economic  laws 
which  are  as  inexorable  as  the  law  of  gravitation. 
The  incidence  of  these  laws  was  well  understood 
and  clearly  foretold,  at  the  time  of  the  peace- 
conference,  by  an  informed  minority  in  Europe, 
notably  by  Mr.  Maynard  Keynes  in  his  volume 
entitled  "The  Economic  Consequences  of  the 
Peace."  In  this  country  also,  a  minority,  suffici- 
ently informed  to  know  its  right  hand  from  its 
left  in  economic  affairs,  stood  aghast  in  contem- 
plation of  the  ruinous  consequences  which  it  per- 
ceived as  inevitable  under  any  serious  attempt 
to  put  this  vicious  instrument  into  operation. 
But  both  here  and  in  Europe,  this  minority  was 
very  small  and  uninfluential,  and  could  accom- 
plish nothing  against  the  ignorant  and  unreason- 
ing bad  temper  which  the  politicians  kept  aflame. 

The  treaty  had  therefore  to  go  to  the  test  of 
experiment;  and  of  the  results  of  this,  one  need 
surely  say  nothing,  for  they  are  obvious.  The 
harder  Germany  tried  to  fulfill  the  conditions  of 
the  treat}%  and  the  nearer  she  came  to  doing  so, 
the  worse  things  went  in  all  the  countries  that 

[7] 


were  presumably  to  benefit  by  her  sacrifice.  The 
Central  Empires  are,  as  the  informed  minority 
in  all  countries  has  been  from  the  beginning 
anxiously  aware,  the  key-group  in  the  whole  of 
European  industry  and  commerce.  If  they  must 
work  and  trade  under  unfavourable  conditions, 
they  also  thereby  automatically  impose  corre- 
spondingly unfavourable  conditions  upon  the 
whole  of  Europe ;  and,  correspondingly  unfavour- 
able conditions  are  thereby  in  turn  automatically 
set  up  wherever  the  trade  of  Europe  reaches — for 
example,  in  the  United  States.  There  is  now 
no  possible  doubt  about  this,  for  one  has  but  to 
glance  at  the  enormous  dislocations  of  interna- 
tional commerce,  and  the  universal  and  profound 
stagnation  of  industry,  in  order  to  prove  it  to 
one's  complete  satisfaction.  Germany  wisely  and 
far-sightedly  made  a  sincere  and  vigourous  effort 
to  comply  with  the  conditions  of  the  treaty;  and 
by  so  doing  she  has  carried  the  rest  of  the  world 
to  the  verge  of  economic  collapse.  The  damage 
wrought  by  the  war  was  in  general  of  a  spectacu- 
lar and  impressive  type,  and  was  indeed  very 
great — no  one  would  minimize  it — but  the  dam- 
age, present  and  prospective,  wrought  by  the 
treaty  of  peace  is  much  greater  and  more  far- 
reaching. 

[8] 


The  political  inheritors  of  those  who  made  the 
peace  are  now  extremely  uneasy  about  it.  Their 
predecessors  (including  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  who 
still  remains'  in  office)  had  flogged  up  popular 
hatred  against  the  Central  Empires  at  such  a 
rate  that  when  they  took  office  they  still  had,  or 
thought  they  had,  to  court  and  indulge  this 
hatred.  Thus  we  found  Mr.  Secretary  Hughes, 
for  example,  in  his  first  communication  to  the 
German  Government,  laying  it  down  that  the  // 
basis  of  the  Versailles  treaty  was  sound — that 
Germany  was  solely  responsible  for  the  war.  He 
spoke  of  it  quite  in  the  vein  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George, 
as  a  chose  jugee.  After  having  promulgated  the 
treaty  with  such  immense  ceremony,  and  raised 
such  preposterous  and  extravagant  popular  ex- 
pectations on  the  strength  of  it,  the  architects  of 
the  treaty  bequeathed  an  exceedingly  difficult 
task  to  their  successors;  the  task  of  letting  the 
public  down,  diverting  their  attention  with  this 
or  that  gesture,  taking  their  mind  off  their  dis- 
appointments and  scaling  down  their  expecta- 
tions, so  that  in  time  it  might  be  safe  to  let  the 
Versailles  treaty  begin  to  sink  out  of  sight. 

The  task  is  being  undertaken ;  the  curious  piece 
of  mountebankery  recently  staged  in  Washington, 
for  example,  was  an  ambitious  effort  to  keep  the 

[9] 


peoples,  particularly  those  of  Europe,  hopeful, 
confiding  and  diverted ;  and  if  economic  conditions 
permit,  if  times  do  not  become  too  hard,  it  may 
succeed.  The  politicians  can  not  say  outright 
that  the  theory  of  the  Versailles  treaty  is  dis- 
honest and  outrageous,  and  that  the  only  chance 
of  peace  and  well-being  is  by  tearing  up  the 
treaty  and  starting  anew  on  another  basis  en- 
tirely. They  can  not  say  this  on  account  of  the 
exigencies  of  their  detestable  trade.  The  best 
that  they  can  do  is  what  they  are  doing.  They 
must  wait  until  the  state  of  public  feeling  permits 
them  to  ease  down  from  their  uncompromising 
stand  upon  the  treaty.  Gradually,  they  expect, 
the  public  will  accustom  itself  to  the  idea  of  re- 
laxations and  accommodations,  as  it  sees,  from 
day  to  day,  the  patent  impracticability  of  any 
other  course;  feelings  will  weaken,  asperities 
soften,  hatreds  die  out,  contacts  and  approaches 
of  one  kind  or  another  will  take  place ;  and  finally, 
these  public  men  or  their  political  inheritors  will 
think  themselves  able  to  effect  in  an  unobtrusive 
way,  such  substantial  modifications  of  the  treaty 
of  Versailles  as  will  amount  to  its  annulment. 

The  process  is  worth  accelerating  by  every 
means  possible;  and  what  I  have  here  done  is 
meant  to  assist  it.     There  are  many  persons  in  the 

[lo] 


country  who  are  not  politicians,  and  who  are  cap- 
able and  desirous  of  approaching  a  matter  of 
this  kind  with  intellectual  honesty.  Quite  pos- 
sibly they  are  not  aware,  many  of  them,  that  the 
Versailles  treaty  postulates  the  sole  responsibil- 
ity of  the  German  Government  for  bringing  on 
the  war;  undoubtedly  they  are  not  acquainted 
with  such  evidence  as  I  have  here  compiled  to 
show  that  this  assumption  is  unjust  and  erron- 
eous. Having  read  this  evidence,  they  will  be 
in  a  position  to  review  the  terms  of  the  Versailles 
treaty  and  reassess  the  justice  of  those  terms. 
They  will  also  be  able  to  understand  the  un- 
willingness, the  inability,  of  the  German  people 
to  acquiesce  in  those  terms;  and  they  can  com- 
prehend the  slowness  and  difficulty  wherewith 
peace  and  good  feeling  are  being  re-established 
in  Europe,  and  the  extreme  precariousness  and 
uncertainty  of  Europe's  situation — and  our  own, 
in  consequence — throughout  a  future  that  seems 
longer  than  one  cares  to  contemplate. 

The  reader  will  perceive  at  once  that  this  book 
is  a  mere  compilation  and  transcription  of  fact, 
containing  not  a  shred  of  opinion  or  of  any  orig- 
inal matter.  On  this  account  it  was  published 
anonymously  in  its  serial  form,  because  it  seemed 
to  me  that  such  work  should  be  judged  strictly 


as  it  stands,  without  regard  to  the  authority,  or 
lack  of  authority,  which  the  compiler  might  hap- 
pen to  possess.  Almost  all  of  it  is  lifted  straight 
from  the  words  of  my  friends  Mr.  Francis  Neil- 
son  and  Mr.  E.  D.  Morel.  I  earnestly  hope — - 
indeed,  it  is  my  chief  motive  in  publishing  this 
book — that  it  may  serve  as  an  introduction  to 
these  words.  I  can  not  place  too  high  an  estimate 
upon  their  importance  to  a  student  of  British  and 
Continental  diplomacy.  They  are,  as  far  as  I 
know,  alone  in  their  field;  nothing  else  can  take 
their  place.  They  are  so  thorough,  so  exhaus- 
tive and  so  authoritative  that  I  wonder  at  their 
being  so  little  known  in  the  United  States.  Mr. 
Morel'^  works,^  "Ten  Years  of  Secret  Diplo- 
macy," "Truth  and  the  War,"  and  "Diplomacy 
Revealed,"  are  simply  indispensable.  Mr.  Neil- 
son's  book  "How  Diplomats  Make  War,"  ^  is  not 
an  easy  book  to  read;  no  more  are  Mr.  Morel's; 
but  without  having  read  it  no  serious  student  can 
possibly  do  justice  to  the  subject. 

Albert  Jay  Nock 

y  i"Ten  Years  of  Secret  Diplomacy."     $1.25.     "Truth  and  the 

War."     $1.25.     E.    D.    Morel.     New    York:    B.    W.    Huebsch. 

"Diplomacy  Revealed."  E.  D.  Morel.  London,  8  &  9  John- 
son's Court:     National  Labour  Press. 

2  "How  Diplomats  Make  War."  Francis  Neilson.  New 
York:    B.  W.  Huebsch.    $2.00 

[12] 


THE  MYTH  OF 
A  GUILTY  NATION 


The  present  course  of  events  in  Europe  is  im- 
pressing on  us  once  more  the  truth  that  military 
victory,  if  it  is  to  stand,  must  also  be  demon- 
strably a  victory  for  justice.  In  the  long  run, 
victory  must  appeal  to  the  sense  of  justice  in  the 
conquered  no  less  than  in  the  conquerors,  if  it 
is  to  be  effective.  There  is  no  way  of  getting 
around  this.  Mr.  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton  is  right 
when  he  says  that  if  the  South  had  not  finally 
accepted  the  outcome  of  the  Civil  War  as  being 
on  the  whole  just,  Lincoln  would  have  been  wrong 
in  trying  to  preserve  the  Union;  which  is  only 
another  way  of  expressing  Lincoln's  own  homely 
saying  that  nothing  is  ever  really  settled  until  it 
is  settled  right.  The  present  condition  of  Europe 
is  largely  due  to  the  fact  that  the  official  peace- 
makers have  not  taken  into  their  reckoning  the 

[13] 


German  people's  sense  of  justice.  Their  mistake 
— it  was  also  Mr.  Wilson's  great  mistake — 
was  in  their  disregard  of  what  Bismarck  called 
the  imponderabilia.  The  terms  of  the  peace 
treaty  plainly  reflect  this  mistake.  That  is 
largely  the  reason  why  the  treaty  is  to-day  in- 
operative and  worthless.  That  is  largely  why 
the  Governments  of  Europe  are  confronted  with 
the  inescapable  alternative:  they  can  either  tear 
up  the  treaty  and  replace  it  by  an  understanding 
based  on  justice,  or  they  can  stick  to  the  treaty 
and  by  so  doing  protract  indefinitely  the  dismal 
succession  of  wars,  revolutions,  bankruptcies  and 
commercial  dislocations  that  the  treaty  inaugu- 
rated. 

That  is  the  situation;  and  it  is  a  situation  in 
which  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  an 
interest  to  preserve — the  primary  interest  of  a 
creditor,  and  also  the  interest  of  a  trader  who 
needs  a  large  and  stable  market.  It  is  idle  to 
suppose  that  American  business  can  prosper  so 
long  as  Europe  remains  in  a  condition  of  in- 
stability and  insolvency.  Our  business  is  ad- 
justed to  the  scale  of  a  solvent  Europe,  and  it  can 
not  be  readjusted  without  irreparable  damage. 
Until  certain  matters  connected  with  the  war  are 
resolutely  put  under  review,  Europe  can  not  be 

[14] 


reconstructed,  and  the  United  States  can  not  be 
prosperous.  The  only  thing  that  can  better  our 
own  situation  is  the  resumption  of  normal  eco- 
nomic life  in  Europe;  and  this  can  be  done  only 
through  a  thorough  reconsideration  of  the  in- 
justices that  have  been  put  upon  the  German 
people  by  the  conditions  of  the  armistice  and  the 
peace  treaty. 

Of  these  injustices,  the  greatest,  because  it  is  r* 
the  f oundatiorT  for  all  the  rest,  is  the  imputation 
of  Germany's  sale  responsibility  for  the  war. 
The  German  people  will  never  endure  that  im- 
putation; they  should  never  be  expected  to  en- 
dure it.  Nothing  can  really  be  settled  until  the 
question  of  responsibility  is  openly  and  can^ 
didly  re-examined,  and  an  understanding  estab- 
lished that  is  based  on  facts  instead  of  on  official 
misrepresentation.  This  question  is  by  no  means 
one  of  abstract  justice  alone,  or  of  chivalry  and 
fair  play  towards  a  defeated  enemy.  It  is  a 
question  of  self-iriterest,  immediate  and  urgent. 
However  it  may  be  regarded  by  the  American 
sense  of  justice  and  fair  play,  it  remains,  to  the 
eye  of  American  industry  and  commerce,  a 
straight  question  of  dollars  and  cents.  The 
prosperity  of  the  United  States,  as  we  are  be- 
ginning to  see,  hangs  upon  the  economic  re-es- 

[15] 


tablishment  of  Europe.  Europe  can  not  possibly 
be  settled  upon  the  present  terms  of  peace;  and 
these  terms  can  not  be  changed  without  first  vacat- 
ing the  theory  of  Germany's  sole  responsibility, 
because  it  is  upon  this  theory  that  the  treaty  of 
Versailles  was  built.  This  theory,  therefore, 
must  be  re-examined  in  the  light  of  evidence 
that  the  Allied  and  Associated  Governments  have 
done  their  best  either  to  ignore  or  to  suppress. 
Hence,  for  the  American  people,  the  way  to 
prosperity  lies  through  a  searching  and  honest 
examination  of  this  theory  that  has  been  so  deeply 
implanted  in  their  mind — the  theory  of  a  brigand- 
nation,  plotting  in  solitude  to  achieve  the  mastery 
of  the  world  by  fire  and  sword. 

Americans,  however,  come  reluctantly  to  the 
task  of  this  examination,  for  two  reasons.  First, 
we  are  all  tired  of  the  war,  we  hate  to  think  of 
it  or  of  anything  connected  with  it,  and  as  far  as 
possible,  we  keep  it  out  of  our  minds.  Second, 
nearly  every  reputation  of  any  consequence  in 
this  country,  political,  clerical,  academic  and 
journalistic,  is  already  committed,  head  over  ears, 
to  the  validity  of  this  theory.  How  many  of  our 
politicians  are  there  whose  reputations  are  not 
bound  up  inextricably  with  this  legend  of  a  Ger- 
man plot?     How  many  of  our  newspaper-editors 

[16] 


managed  to  preserve  detachment  enough  under 
the  pressure  of  war-propaganda  to  be  able  to  come 
forward  to-day  and  say  that  the  question  of  re- 
sponsibility for  the  war  should  be  re-opened^ 
How  can  the  pro-war  liberals  and  ex-pacifists  ask 
for  such  an  inquest  when  they  were  all  swept  off 
their  feet  by  the  specious  plea  that  this  war  was 
a  different  war  from  all  other  wars  in  the  history 
of  mankind^  What  can  our  ministers  of  religion 
say  after  the  unreserved  endorsement  that  they 
put  upon  the  sanctity  of  the  Allied  cause'?  What 
can  our  educators  say,  after  having  served  so 
zealously  the  ends  of  the  official  propagandists'? 
From  our  journalists  and  men  of  letters  what 
can  we  expect — after  all  his  rodomontade  about  .. 
Potsdam  and  the  Potsdam  gang,  how  could  we  "^ 
expect  Dr.  Henry  Van  Dyke,  for  instance,  to  face 
the  fact  that  the  portentous  Potsdam  meeting  of 
the  Crown  Council  on  5  July,  1914,  never  took 
place  at  all?  There  is  no  use  in  trying  to  put 
a  breaking-strain  upon  human  nature,  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  in  assuming  a  pharisaic  attitude  to- 
wards its  simplest  and  commonest  frailties.  It 
is  best,  under  the  circumstances,  merely  to  under- 
stand that  on  this  question  every  institutional 
voice  in  the  United  States  is  tongue-tied.  Press, 
pulpit,    schools    and    universities,    charities    and 

[17] 


foundations,  forums,  all  are  silent;  and  to  ex- 
pect them  to  break  their  silence  is  to  expect  more 
than  should  be  expected  from  the  pride  of  opinion 


in  average  human  nature. 


[18] 


II 


In  examining  the  evidence  let  us  first  take  Mr. 
Lloyd  George's  own  statement  of  the  theory.  Ex- 
cept in  one  particular,  it  presents  the  case  against 
Germany  quite  as  it  has  been  rehearsed  by  nearly 
every  institutional  voice  in  the  United  States. 
On  4  August,  1917 — after  America's  entry  into 
the  war — the  British  Premier  said : 

What  are  we  fighting  for^  To  defeat  the  most 
dangerous  conspiracy  ever  plotted  against  the  liberty  of 
nations ;  carefully,  skilfully,  insidiously,  clandestinely 
planned  in  every  detail,  with  ruthless,  cynical  deter- 
mination. 

Except  for  one  point,  this  statement  sums  up 
what  we  have  all  heard  to  be  the  essential  doc- 
trine of  the  war.  The  one  missing  point  in  Mr. 
Lloyd  George's  indictment  is  that  the  great  Ger- 
man conspiracy  was  launched  upon  an  unprepared 
Europe.  In  Europe  itself,  the  official  propagan- 
dists did  not  make  much  of  this  particular  point, 
for  far  too  many  people  knew  better;  but  in  the 

[19] 


United  States  it  was  promulgated  widely.  In- 
deed, this  romance  of  Allied  unpreparedness  was 
an  essential  part  of  the  whole  story  of  German 
responsibility.  Germany,  so  the  official  story  ran, 
not  only  plotted  in  secret,  but  she  sprung  her  plot 
upon  a  Europe  that  was  wholly  unprepared  and 
unsuspecting.  Her  action  was  like  that  of  a 
highwayman  leaping  from  ambush  upon  a  de- 
fencfelesB  wayfarer.  Belgium  was  unprepared, 
France  unprepared,  Russia  unprepared,  Eng- 
land unprepared;  and  in  face  of  an  unpro- 
voked attack,  these  nations  hurriedly  drew  to- 
gether in  an  extemporized  union,  and  held  the 
"mad  dog"  at  bay  with  an  extemporized  de- 
fence until  they  could  devise  a  plan  of  common 
action  and  a  pooling  of  military  and  naval  re- 
sources. 

Such,  then,  is  a  fair  statement  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  war  as  America  was  taught  it.  Next,  in 
order  to  show  how  fundamental  this  doctrine  is  to 
the  terms  of  the  peace  treaty,  let  us  consider  an- 
other statement  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  made  3 
March,  1921: 

For  the  allies,  German  responsibility  for  the  war  is 
fundamental.  It  is  the  basis  upon  which  the  structure 
of  the  treaty  of  Versailles  has  been  erected,  and  if  that 
acknowledgment  is  repudiated  or  abandoned,  the  treaty 

[20] 


is  destroyed.  .  .  .  We  wish,  therefore,  once  and  for  all, 
to  make  it  quite  clear  that  German  responsibility  for  the 
war  must  be  treated  by  the  Allies  as  a  chose  jugee. 

Thus  the  British  Premier  explicitly  declares 
that  the  treaty  of  Versailles  is  based  upon  the 
theory  of  Germany's  sole  responsibility. 

Now,  as  against  this  theory^  the  main  facts 
may  be  summarized  as  follows:  (i)  The  British 
and  French  General  Staffs  had  been  in  active 
collaboration  for  war  with  Germany  ever  since 
January  1906.  (2)  The  British  and  French 
Admiralty  had  been  in  similar  collaboration. 
(3)  The  late  Lord  Fisher  [First  Sea  Lord  of  the 
British  Admiralty],  twice  in  the  course  of  these 
preparations,  proposed  an  attack  upon  the  Ger- 
man fleet  and  a  landing  upon  the  coast  of 
Pomerania,  without  a  declaration  of  zvar.  (4) 
Russia  had  been  preparing  for  war  ever  since 
1909,  and  the  Russian  and  French  General  Staffs 
had  come  to  a  formal  understanding  that  Russian 
mobilization  should  be  held  equivalent  to  a  dec- 
laration of  war.  (5)  Russian  mobiljization  was 
begun  in  the  spring  of  1914,  under  the  guise 
of  "tests,"  and  these  tests  were  carried  on  con- 
tinuously to  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  (6)  In 
April,    1914,   four  months  before  the  war,   the 

[21] 


Russian  and  French  naval  authorities  initiated 
joint  plans  for  maritime  operations  against  Ger- 
many. (7)  Up  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  Ger- 
many was  selling  grain  in  considerable  quantities 
to  both  France  and  Russia.  (8)  It  can  not  be 
shown  that  the  German  Government  ever  in  a 
single  instance,  throughout  all  its  dealings  with 
foreign  Governments,  demanded  or  intimated  for 
Germany  anything  more  than  a  position  of  eco- 
nomic equality  with  other  nations. 

These  facts,  among  others  to  which  reference 
will  hereafter  be  made,  have  come  to  light  only 
since  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  They  effectively 
dispose  of  the  theory  of  an  unprepared  and  un- 
suspecting Europe;  and  a  historical  survey  of 
them  excludes  absolutely,  and  stamps  as  utterly 
untenable  and  preposterous,  the  theory  of  a  de- 
liberate German  plot  against  the  peace  of  the 
world. 


[w] 


Ill 


Let  us  now  consider  the  idea  so  generally  held 
in  America,  though  not  in  Europe,  that  in  1914, 
England  and  the  Continental  nations  were  not 
expecting  war  and  not  prepared  for  war.  The 
fact  is  that  Europe  was  as  thoroughly  organized 
for  war  as  it  could  possibly  be.  The  point  to 
which  that  organization  was  carried  by  England, 
France  and  Russia,  as  compared  with  Germany 
and  Austria,  may  to  some  extent  be  indicated 
by  statistics.  In.  1913,  Russia  carried  a  military 
establishment  (on  a  peace  footing)  of  1,284,000 
men;  France,  by  an  addition  of  183,000  men, 
proposed  to  raise  her  peace-establishment  to  a 
total  of  741,572.  Germany,  by  an  addition  of 
174,373  men,  proposed  to  raise  her  total  to 
821,964;  and  Austria,  by  additions  of  58,505  al- 
ready made,  brought  her  total  up  to  473,643. 
These  are  the  figures  of  the  British  War  Office, 
as  furnished  to  the  House  of  Commons  in  1913. 
Here  is  a  set  of  figures  that  is  even  more  inter- 
esting and  significant.     From  1909  to  1914,  the 

[23] 


amount  spent  on  new  naval  construction  by  Eng- 
land, France  and  Russia,  as  compared  with  Ger- 
many, was  as  follows: 


England 

France 

Russia 

Germany 

1909 

£11,076,551 

£  4,517,766 

£  1,758,487 

£10,177,062 

1910 

£14,755,289 

£  4,977,682 

£  1,424,013 

£11,392,856 

I9H 

£15,148,171 

£  5.876,659 

£  3,216,396 

£11,710,859 

1912 

£16,132,558 

£  7,114,876 

£  6,897,580 

£11,491,187 

I9I3 

£16,883,875 

£  8,893,064 

£12,082,516 

£11,010,883 

1914 

£18,676,080 

£11,772,862 

£13,098,613 

£10,316,264 

These  figures  can  not  be  too  carefully  studied 
by  those  who  have  been  led  to  think  that  Ger- 
many pounced  upon  a  defenceless  and  unsuspect- 
ing Europe  like  a  cat  upon  a  mouse.  If  it  be 
thought  worth  while  to  consider  also  the  period 
of  a  few  years  preceding  1909,  one  finds  that 
England's  superiority  in  battleships  alone  was 
,112  per  cent  in  1901,  and  her  superiority  rose  to 
nearly  200  per  cent  in  1904;  in  which  year  Eng- 
land spent  £42,431,000  on  her  navy,  and  Ger- 
many £11,659,000.  Taking  the  comparative 
statistics  of  naval  expenditure  from  1900,  in 
which  year  England  spent  £32,055,000  on  her 
navy,  and  Germany  spent  £7,472,000,  down  to 
1914  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  make  the 
figures  show  that  Germany  enforced  upon  the 
other  nations  of  Europe  an  unwilling  competition 
in  naval  armament. 

[241 


But  the  German  army!  According  to  all  ac- 
counts of  German  militarism  which  were  suffered 
to  reach  these  shores,  it  is  here  that  we  shall  find 
evidence  of  what  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  on  4  Au- 
gust, 1917,  called  "the  most  dangerous  conspiracy 
ever  plotted  against  the  liberty  of  nations;  care- 
fully, skilfully,  insidiously,  clandestinely  planned 
in  every  detail,  with  ruthless,  cynical  determina- 
tion." Well,  if  one  chooses  to  hold  the  current 
view  of  German  militarism,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  Germany  had  at  her  disposal  some  miracu- 
lous means  of  getting  something  for  nothing,  get- 
ting a  great  deal  for  nothing,  in  fact,  for  on  any 
other  supposition,  the  figures  are  far  from  sup- 
porting that  view.  In  1914  (pre-war  figures), 
Germany  and  Austria  together  carried  an  army- 
expenditure  of  £92  million;  England,  France  and 
Russia  together  carried  one  of  £142  million. 
England  "had  no  army,"  it  was  said;  all  her 
military  strength  lay  in  her  navy.  If  that  were 
true,  then  it  must  be  said  that  she  had  as  miracu- 
lous a  faculty  as  Germany's;  only,  whereas  Ger- 
many's was  a  faculty  for  getting  more  than  her 
money's  worth,  England's  was  for  getting 
less  than  her  money's  worth.  England's  army- 
expenditure  for  1914  (pre-war  figures)  was  £28 
million;  £4  million  more  than  Austria's.     Nor 

[25] 


v/as  this  a  sudden  emergency-outlay.  Going 
back  as  far  as  1905,  we  find  that  she  laid  out  in 
that  year  the  same  amount,  £28  million.  In  that 
year,  Germany  and  Austria  together  spent  £48 
million  on  their  armies;  England,  France  and 
Russia  together  spent  £94  million  on  theirs.  If 
between  1905  and  1913,  England,  France  and 
Russia  spent  any  such  sums  upon  their  armies 
as  their  statistics  show,  and  nothing  came  of  it 
but  an  unprepared  and  unsuspecting  Europe  in 
1914,  it  seems  clear  that  the  taxpayers  of  those 
countries  were  swindled  on  an  inconceivably  large 
scale. 


[26] 


IV 


At  this  point,  some  questions  may  be  raised. 
Why,  in  the  decade  preceding  1914,  did  England, 
France  and  Russia  arm  themselves  at  the  rate 
indicated  by  the  foregoing  figures^  Why  did 
they  accelerate  their  naval  development  progres- 
sively from  about  £17  million  in  1909  to  about 
\^  £43  million  in  1914'?  Why  did  Russia  alone 
propose  to  raise  her  military  peace-establishment 
to  an  army  of  1,700,000,  more  than  double  the 
size  of  Germany's  army'?  Against  whom  were 
these  preparations  directed,  and  understood  to  be 
directed'?  Certainly  not  against  one  another. 
France  and  Russia  had  been  bound  by  a  military 
convention  ever  since  17  August,  1892;  England 
and  France  had  been  bound  since  January,  1906, 
by  a  similar  pact;  and  this  was  subsequently  ex- 
tended to  include  Belgium.  These  agreements 
will  be  considered  in  detail  hereafter;  they  are  now 
mentioned  merely  to  show  that  the  military  activ- 
ity in  these  countries  was  not  independent  in  pur- 
pose.    France,    England,    Russia    and    Belgium 

[27] 


were  not  uneasy  about  one  another  and  not  arm- 
ing against  one  another ;  nor  is  there  any  evidence 
that  anyone  thought  that  they  were.  It  was 
against  the  Central  Empires  only  that  these  prep- 
arations were  addressed.  Nor  can  one  who 
scans  the  table  of  relative  expenditure  easily  be- 
lieve that  the  English-French-Russian  combina- 
tion was  effected  for  purely  defensive  purposes; 
and  taking  the  diplomatic  history  of  the  period 
in  conjunction  with  the  testimony  of  the  budgets, 
such  belief  becomes  impossible. 


[28] 


The  British  Government  is  the  one  which  was 
most  often  represented  to  us  as  taken  utterly  by 
surprise  by  the  German  onslaught  on  Belgium. 
Let  us  see.  The  Austrian  Archduke  was  assassi- 
nated 28  June,  1914,  by  three  men  who,  accord- 
ing to  wide  report  in  Europe  and  absolute  cer- 
tainty in  America,  were  secret  agents  of  the  Ger- 
man Government,  acting  under  German  official 
instruction.  The  findings  of  the  court  of  inquiry 
showed  that  they  were  Serbs,  members  of  a  pan- 
Slav  organization;  that  the  assassination  was 
plotted  in  Belgrade,  and  the  weapons  with  which 
it  was  committed  were  obtained  there. ^  Serbia 
denied  all  connexion  with  the  assassins  (the 
policy  of  Serbia  being  then  controlled  by  the 
Russian  Foreign  Office),  and  then  the  Russian 

1  Six  months  after  the  armistice,  the  bodies  of  the  three  as- 
sassins were  dug  up,  according  to  a  Central  News  dispatch 
from  Prague,  "with  great  solemnity,  in  the  presence  of  thou- 
sands of  the  inhabitants.  The  remains  of  these  Serbian  officers 
are  to  be  sent  to  their  native  country."  This  is  a  naive  state- 
ment. It  remains  to  be  explained  why  these  "German  agents" 
should   be   honoured   in   this   distinguished   way  by  the   Serbs! 

[29] 


Government  stepped  forward  to  prevent  the  hu- 
miliation of  Serbia  by  Austria.  It  is  clear  from 
the  published  diplomatic  documents  that  the 
British  Foreign  Office  knew  everything  that  took 
place  between  the  assassination  and  the  burial  of 
the  Archduke;  all  the  facts,  that  is,  connected 
with  the  murder.  The  first  dispatch  in  the 
British  White  Paper  is  dated  20  July,  and  it  is 
addressed  to  the  British  Ambassador  at  Berlin. 
One  wonders  why  not  to  the  Ambassador  at 
Vienna;  also  one  wonders  why  the  diplomats  ap- 
parently found  nothing  to  write  about  for  nearly 
three  weeks  between  the  Archduke's  funeral  and 
20  July.  It  is  a  strange  silence.  Sir  Edward 
Grey,  however,  made  a  statement  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  27  July,  in  which  he  gave  the  impres- 
sion that  he  got  his  first  information  about  the 
course  of  the  quarrel  between  Austria  and  Serbia 
no  earlier  than  24  July,  three  days  before.  The 
Ambassador  at  Vienna,  Sir  M.  de  Bunsen,  had, 
notwithstanding,  telegraphed  him  that  the  Aus- 
trian Premier  had  given  him  no  hint  of  "the 
impending  storm"  and  that  it  was  from  a  private 
source  "that  I  received,  15  July,  the  forecast  of 
what  was  about  to  happen,  concerning  which  I 
telegraphed  to  you  the  following  day.'"  Sir 
Maurice  de  Bunsen's  telegram  on  this  important 

[30] 


subject  thus  evidently  was  suppressed;  and  the 
only  obvious  reason  for  the  suppression  is  that 
it  carried  evidence  that  Sir  E.  Grey  was 
thoroughly  well  posted  by  16  July  on  what  was 
taking  place  in  Vienna.  Sir  M.  de  Bunsen's  al- 
lusion to  this  telegram  confirms  this  assumption; 
in  fact,  it  can  be  interpreted  in  no  other  way. 

On  28  July,  the  House  of  Commons  was  in- 
formed that  Austria  had  declared  war  on  Serbia. 
Two  days  later,  30  July,  Sir  E.  Grey  added  the 
item  of  information  that  Russia  had  ordered  a 
partial  mobilization  ''which  has  not  hitherto  led 
to  any  corresponding  steps  by  other  Powers,  so 
far  as  our  information  goes."  Sir  E.  Grey  did 
not  add,  however,  that  he  knew  quite  well  what 
"corresponding  steps"  other  Powers  were  likely 
to  take.  He  knew  the  terms  of  the  Russian- 
French  military  convention,  under  which  a  mobili- 
zation by  Russia  was  to  be  held  equivalent  to  a 
declaration  of  war;  he  also  knew  the  terms  of  the 
English-French  agreement  which  he  himself  had 
authorized — although  up  to  the  eve  of  the  war 
he  denied,  in  reply  to  questions  in  the  House  of 
Comm.ons,  that  any  such  agreement  existed,  and 
acknowledged  it  only  on  3  August,  1914.^     He 

^  See  footnote  to  chapter  XVIII 

[31] 


had  promised  Sazonov,  the  Russian  Foreign  Min- 
ister, in  1912,  that  in  the  event  of  Germany^s 
coming  to  Austria's  aid,  Russia  could  rely  on 
Great  Britain  to  "stake  everything  in  order  to 
inflict  the  most  serious  blow  to  German  power."' 
To  say  that  Sir  E.  Grey,  and  a  fortiori  Mr.  As- 
quith,  the  Prime  Minister;  Lord  Haldane,  the 
Minister  for  War,  whose  own  book  has  been  a 
most  tremendous  let-down  to  the  fictions  of  the 
propagandists;  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  head  of 
the  Admiralty,  who  at  Dundee,  5  June,  1915, 
declared  that  he  had  been  sent  to  the  Admiralty 
in  1911  with  the  express  duty  laid  upon  him  by 
the  Prime  Minister  to  put  the  fleet  in  a  state  of 
instant  and  constant  readiness  for  war ;  to  say  that 
these  men  were  taken  by  surprise  and  unprepared, 
is  mere  levity. 

Austria  was  supposed  to  be,  and  still  is  by 
some  believed  to  have  been,  Germany's  vassal 
State,  and  by  menacing  Serbia  to  have  been  doing 
Germany's  dirty  work.  No  evidence  of  this  has 
been  adduced;  and  the  trouble  with  this  idea  of 
Austria's  status  is  that  it  breaks  down  before  the 
report  of  Sir  M.  de  Bunsen,  1  September,  1914, 
that  Austria  finally  yielded  and  agreed  to  accept 
all  the  proposals  of  the  Powers  for  mediation  be- 

[32] 


tween  herself  and  Serbia.  She  made  every  con- 
cession. Russian  mobilization,  however,  had  be- 
gun on  25  July  and  become  general  four  days 
later;  and  it  was  not  stopped.  Germany  then 
gave  notice  that  she  would  mobilize  her  army  if 
Russian  mobilization  was  not  stopped  in  twelve 
hours ;  and  also,  knowing  the  terms  of  the  Russian- 
French  convention  of  1892,  she  served  notice 
on  France,  giving  her  eighteen  hours  to  declare 
her  position.  Russia  made  no  reply;  France  an- 
swered that  she  would  do  what  she  thought  best  in 
her  own  interest;  and  almost  at  the  moment,  on 
1  August,  when  Germany  ordered  a  general 
mobilization,  Russian  troops  were  over  her  border, 
the  British  fleet  had  been  mobilized  for  a  week 
in  the  North  Sea^  and  British  merchant  ships  were 
lying  at  Kronstadt,  empty,  to  convey  Russian 
troops  from  that  port  to  the  Pomeranian  coast, 
in  pursuance  of  the  plan  indicated  by  Lord 
Fisher  in  his  autobiography,  recently  published. 
These  matters  are  well  summed  up  by  Lord 
Loreburn,  as  follows: 

Serbia  gave  offence  to  the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire, 
cause  of  just  offence,  as  our  Ambassador  frankly  admits 
in   his   published    dispatches.     We    [England]    had   no 

[33] 


concern  in  that  quarrel,  as  Sir  Edward  Grey  says  in 
terms.  But  Russia,  the  protectress  of  Serbia,  came 
forward  to  prevent  her  being  utterly  humiliated  by  Aus- 
tria. We  were  not  concerned  in  that  quarrel  either,  as 
Sir  Edward  also  says.  And  then  Russia  called  upon 
France  under  their  treaty  to  help  in  the  fight.  France 
was  not  concerned  in  that  quarrel  any  more  than  our- 
selves, as  Sir  Edward  informs  us.  But  France  was 
bound  by  a  Russian  treaty,  of  which  he  did  not  know 
the  terms,  and  then  France  called  on  us  for  help.  Wc 
were  tied  by  the  relations  which  our  Foreign  Office  had 
created,  without  apparently  realizing  that  they  had  cre- 
ated them. 

In  saying  that  Sir  E.  Grey  did  not  know  the 
terms  of  the  Franco-Russian  agreement,  Lord 
Loreburn  is  generous,  probably  more  generous 
than  he  should  be;  but  that  is  no  matter.  The 
thing  to  be  remarked  is  that  Lord  Loreburn' s  sum- 
ming-up comes  to  something  wholly  different 
from  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  "most  dangerous  con- 
spiracy ever  plotted  against  the  liberty  of  na- 
tions." It  comes  to  something  wholly  different 
from  the  notion  implanted  in  Americans,  of  Ger- 
many pouncing  upon  a  peaceful,  unprepared  and 
unsuspecting  Europe.  The  German  nation,  wc 
may  be  sure,  is  keenly  aware  of  this  difference; 
and  therefore,  any  peace  which,  like  the  peace  of 
Versailles,  is  bottomed  on  the  chose  jugee  of  lay- 

[34] 


ing  the  sole  responsibility  for  the  war  at  the  door 
of  the  German  nation,  or  even  at  the  door  of  the 
German  Government,  is  simply  impracticable  and 
impossible. 


[35] 


VI 


If  the  theory  upon  which  the  treaty  of  Versailles 
is  based,  the  theory  of  a  single  guilty  nation, 
were  true,  there  would  be  no  trouble  about 
saying  what  the  war  was  fought  for.  The  Allied 
belligerents  would  have  a  simple,  straight  story 
to  tell;  they  could  describe  their  aims  and  inten- 
tions clearly  in  a  few  words  that  any  one  could 
understand,  and  their  story  would  be  reasonably 
consistent  and  not  vary  greatly  from  year  to  year. 
It  would  be  practically  the  same  story  in  1918 
as  in  1915  or  at  any  time  between.  In  America, 
indeed,  the  story  did  not  greatly  vary  up  to  the 
spring  of  1917,  for  the  reason  that  this  country 
was  pretty  much  in  the  dark  about  European  in- 
ternational relations.  Once  our  indignation  and 
sympathies  were  aroused,  it  was  for  the  propa- 
gandists mostly  a  matter  of  keeping  them  as  hot 
as  possible.  Few  had  the  information  necessary 
to  discount  the  plain,  easy,  understandable  story 
of  a  robber  nation  leaping  upon  an  unprepared 
and  defenceless  Europe  for  no  cause  whatever 

[36] 


except  the  lofty  ambition,  as  Mr.  Joseph  Choate 
said,  "to  establish  a  world-empire  upon  the  ruins 
of  the  British  Empire."  Those  who  had  this  in- 
formation could  not  make  themselves  heard;  and 
thus  it  was  that  the  propagandists  had  no  need  to 
vary  the  one  story  that  was  most  useful  to  their 
purpose  of  keeping  us  in  a  state  of  unreasoning 
indignation,  and  accordingly  they  did  not  vary  it. 
In  Europe  and  in  England,  however,  the  case 
was  different.  International  relations  were  bet- 
ter understood  by  those  who  were  closer  to  them 
than  we  were;  more  questions  were  raised  and 
more  demands  made.  Hence  the  Allied  poli- 
ticians and  propagandists  were  kept  busy  upon  the 
defensive.  When  from  time  to  time  the  voice 
of  popular  discontent  or  of  some  influential  body 
of  opinion  insisted  on  a  statement  of  the  causes 
of  the  war  or  of  the  war-aims  of  the  Allies,  they 
were  confronted  with  the  politician's  traditional 
difficulty.  They  had  to  say  something  plausible 
and  satisfactory,  which  yet  must  be  something 
that  effectively  hid  the  truth  of  the  situation. 
As  the  war  hung  on,  their  difficulty  became  des- 
perate and  they  threw  consistency  to  the  winds, 
telling  any  sort  of  story  that  would  enable  them 
for  the  moment  to  "get  by."  The  publication 
of  the  secret  treaties  which  had  been  seined  out 

[37] 


of  the  quagmire  of  the  old  Russian  Foreign 
Office  by  the  revolutionists  made  no  end  of 
trouble  for  them.  It  is  amusing  now  to  remem- 
ber how  promptly  these  treaties  were  branded 
by  the  British  Foreign  Office  as  forgeries;  espe- 
cially when  it  turned  out  that  the  actual  terms 
of  the  armistice — not  the  nominal  terms,  which 
were  those  of  Mr.  Wilson's  Fourteen  Points,  but 
the  actual  terms — were  the  terms  of  the  secret 
treaties  I  The  publication  of  the  secret  treaties 
in  this  country  did  not  contribute  much  towards 
a  disillusionment  of  the  public;  the  press  as  a 
rule  ignored  or  lied  about  them,  they  were  not 
widely  read,  and  few  who  did  read  them  had 
enough  understanding  of  European  affairs  to  in- 
terpret them.  But  abroad  they  put  a  good  deal 
of  fat  into  the  fire;  and  this  was  a  specimen  of 
the  kind  of  thing  that  the  Allied  politicians  had 
to  contend  with  in  their  efforts  to  keep  their 
peoples  in  line. 

The  consequence  was  that  the  official  and  semi- 
official statements  of  the  causes  of  the  war  and 
of  the  war-aims  of  the  Allies  are  a  most  curious 
hotchpotch.  In  fact,  if  any  one  takes  stock  in 
the  theory  of  the  one  guilty  nation  and  is  there- 
fore convinced  that  the  treaty  of  Versailles  is 
just  and  proper  and  likely  to  enforce  an  endur- 

[38] 


ing  peace,  one  could  suggest  nothing  better  than 
that  he  should  go  through  the  literature  of  the 
war,  pick  out  these  statements,  put  them  ^ in  par- 
allel columns,  and  see  how  they  look.  \lf  the 
war  originated  in  the  unwarranted  conspiracy  of 
a  robber  nation,  if  the  aims  of  the  Allies  were  to 
defeat  that  conspiracy  and  render  it  impotent 
and  to  chastise  and  tie  the  hands  of  the  robber 
nation — and  that  is  the  theory  of  the  treaty  of  \y. 
Versailles — can  anyone  in  his  right  mind  sup- 
pose that  the  Allied  politicians  and  propagandists 
would  ever  give  out,  or  need  to  give  out,  these 
ludicrously  contradictory  and  inconsistent  expla- 
nations and  statements  ?  )  When  one  has  a  simple, 
straight  story  to  tell,  and  a  most  effective  story, 
why  complicate  it  and  undermine  it  and  throw 
all  sorts  of  doubts  upon  it,  by  venturing  upon 
all  sorts  of  public  utterances  that  will  not  square 
with  it  in  any  conceivable  way*?  Politicians,  of 
all  men,  never  lie  for  the  fun  of  it;  their  avail- 
able margin  of  truth  is  always  so  narrow  that 
they  keep  within  it  when  they  can.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George,  for  example,  is  one  of  the  cleverest  of 
politicians.  We  have  already  considered  his  two 
statements;  first,  that  of  4  August,  1917: 

What    are    we    fighting    for*?     To    defeat    the    most 
dangerous  conspiracy  ever  plotted  against  the  liberty  of 

[39] 


nations;  carefully,  skilfully,  insidiously,  clandestinely 
planned  in  every  detail  with  ruthless,  cynical  deter- 
mination. 

— and  then  that  of  3  March,  1921 : 

For  the  Allies,  German  responsibility  for  the  war  is 
fundamental.  It  is  the  basis  upon  which  the  structure 
of  the  treaty  of  Versailles  has  been  erected,  and  if  that 
acknowledgment  is  repudiated  or  abandoned,  the  treaty 
is  destroyed.  .  .  .  German  responsibility  for  the  war 
must  be  treated  by  the  Allies  as  a  chose  jugee. 

A  little  over  two  months  before  Mr.  George 
made  this  latter  utterance,  on  23  December,  1920, 
he  said  this: 

The  more  one  reads  memoirs  and  books  written  in  the 
various  countries  of  what  happened  before  the  first  of 
August,  1914,  the  more  one  realizes  that  no  one  at  the 
head  of  affairs  quite  meant  war  at  that  stage.  It  was 
something  into  which  they  glided,  or  rather  staggered  and 
stumbled,  perhaps  through  folly;  and  a  discussion,  I 
have  no  doubt,  would  have  averted  it. 

Well,  it  would  strike  an  unprejudiced  person 
that  if  this  were  true,  there  is  a  great  deal  of 
doubt  put  upon  Mr.  Lloyd  George's  former  state- 
ments by  Mr.  Lloyd  George  himself.  Persons 
who  plot  carefully,  skilfully,  insidiously  and  clan- 
destinely, do  not  glide;  they  do  not  stagger  or 
stumble,  especially  through  folly.     They  keep  go- 

[40] 


ing,  as  we  in  America  were  assured  that  the  Ger- 
man Government  did  keep  going,  right  up  to  The 
Day  of  their  own  choosing.  Moreover,  they  are 
not  likely  to  be  headed  off  by  discussion;  high- 
waymen are  notoriously  curt  in  their  speech  and 
if  one  attempts  discussion  with  them  they  become 
irritable  and  peremptory.  ,  This  is  the  invariable 
habit  of  highwaymen.  Besides,  if  discussion 
would  have  averted  war  in  1914,  why  was  it  not 
forthcoming?  Certainly  not  through  any  fault 
of  the  Austrian  Government,  which  made  every 
concession,  as  the  British  Ambassador's  report 
shows,  notwithstanding  its  grievance  against 
Serbia  was  a  just  one.  Certainly  not  through  any 
fault  of  the  German  Government,  which  never 
refused  discussion  and  held  its  hand  with  all  the 
restraint  possible  under  the  circumstances  just  de- 
scribed. Well,  then,  how  is  it  so  clear  that  Ger- 
man responsibility  for  the  war  should  be  treated 
as  a  chose  ]ugee? 


^ 


^> 


r 


VII 


People  who  have  a  clear  and  simple  case  do  not 
talk  in  this  fashion.  Picking  now  at  random 
among  the  utterances  of  politicians  and  propagan- 
dists, we  find  an  assorted  job-lot  of  aims  assigned 
and  causes  alleged,  and  in  all  of  them  there  is 
that  curious,  incomprehensible  and  callous  dis- 
regard of  the  power  of  conviction  that  a  straight 
story  always  exercises,  if  you  have  one  to  tell. 
In  November,  1917,  when  the  Foreign  Office  was 
being  pestered  by  demands  for  a  statement  of  the 
Allied  war-aims.  Lord  Robert  Cecil  said  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  that  the  restitution  of  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  to  France  was  a  'Veil-understood 
war- aim  from  the  moment  we  entered  the  war," 
^  As  things  have  turned  out,  it  is  an  odd  coincidence 
how  so  many  of  these  places  that  have  iron  or 
coal  or  oil  in  them  seem  to  represent  a  well-un- 
derstood war-aim.  Less  than  a  month  before,  in 
October,  1917,  General  Smuts  said  that  to  his 
mind  the  one  great  dominating  war-aim  was  "the 
end  of  militarism,  the  end  of  standing  armies." 
Well,  the  Allies  won  the  war,  but  judging  by 

[42] 


results,  this  dominating  war-aim  seems  rather  to 
have  been  lost  sight  of.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  again 
on  another  occasion,  said  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons that  "self-determination  was  one  of  the 
principles  for  which  we  entered  the  war  ...  a 
principle  from  which  we  have  never  departed 
since  the  beginning  of  the  war."  This,  too, 
seems  an  aim  that  for  some  reason  the  victorious 
nations  have  not  quite  realized;  indeed  in  some 
cases,  as  in  Ireland,  for  example,  there  has  been 
no  great  alacrity  shown  about  trying  to  realize  it. 
Viscount  Bryce  said  that  the  war  sprang  from  the 
strife  of  races  and  religions  in  the  Balkan  coun- 
tries, and  from  the  violence  done  to  the  senti- 
ment of  nationality  in  Alsace-Lorraine  which 
made  France  the  ally  of  Russia.  But  the  fact 
is  that  France  became  the  ally  of  Russia  on 
the  basis  of  hard  cash,  and  since  the  Russian 
Revolution,  she  has  been  a  bit  out  of  luck  by 
way  of  getting  her  money  'back.  Mr.  Asquith  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  3  August,  1914  said: 

If  I  am  asked  what  we  are  fighting  for,  I  reply  in 
two  sentences.  In  the  first  place,  to  fulfil  a  solemn 
international  obligation.  .  .  .  Secondly  we  are  fight- 
ing ...  to  vindicate  the  principle  that  small  nation- 
alities are  not  to  be  crushed  in  defiance  of  international 
good  faith. 

[43] 


Just  so:  and  in  the  House  of  Commons,  20 
December,  1917,  he  said: 

The  League  of  Nations  .  .  .  was  the  avowed  purpose, 
the  very  purpose  .  .  .  for  which  we  entered  the  war  and 
for  which  we  are  continuing  the  war. 

You  pays  your  money,  you  see,  and  takes  your 
choice.  The  point  to  be  made,  however,  is  that 
one  who  has  a  strong  case,  a  real  case,  never 
trifles  with  it  in  this  way.  Would  the  reader 
doit? 


[Ml 


VIII 


Mr.  Asquith's  citation  of  a  "solemn  interna- 
tional obligation"  refers  to  the  so-called  Belgian 
treaties.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  case  of 
Belgium  was  the  great  winning  card  played  by 
the  Allied  Governments  for  the  stakes  of  Amer- 
ican sympathies ;  and  therefore  we  may  here  prop- 
erly make  a  survey,  somewhat  in  detail,  of  the 
status  of  Belgium  at  the  outset  of  the  war. 

Belgium  had  learned  forty  years  ago  how  she 
stood  under  the  treaties  of  1831  and  1839. 
When  in  the  late  'eighties  there  was  likelihood  of 
a  Franco-German  war,  the  question  of  England's 
participation  under  these  treaties  was  thoroughly 
discussed,  and  it  was  shown  conclusively  that 
England  was  not  obligated.  Perhaps  the  best 
summary  of  the  case  was  that  given  by  Mr.  W. 
T.  Stead  in  the  Fall  Mall  Gazette  in  the  issues 
of  4  and  5  February,  1887.  After  an  examina- 
tion of  the  treaties  of  1831,  1839  ^^^  1870 — an 
examination  unfortunately  too  long  to  be  quoted 
here — Mr.  Stead  briefly  sums  up  the  result  of  his 
investigation  in  the  following  statement: 

[45] 


There  is  therefore  no  English  guarantee  to  Belgium.  It 
is  possible  perhaps,  to  'construct'  such  a  guarantee;  but 
the  case  may  be  summed  up  as  follows :  ( i )  England  is 
under  no  guarantee  whatever  except  such  as  is  common 
to  Austria,  France,  Russia  and  Germany;  (2)  that 
guarantee  is  not  specifically  of  the  neutrality  of  Belgium 
at  all;  and  (3)  is  given,  not  to  Belgium  but  to  the 
Netherlands. 

This  was  the  official  view  of  the  British  Gov- 
ernment at  the  time,  and  it  is  reflected  in  the  cele- 
brated letter  signed  "Diplomaticus"  in  the 
Standard  of  4  February,  to  which  Mr.  Sjiead  re- 
fers; which,  indeed,  he  makes  the  guiding  text 
for  his  examination.  The  Standard  was  then  the 
organ  of  Lord  Salisbury's  Government,  and  it  is 
as  nearly  certain  as  anything  of  the  sort  can  be, 
that  the  letter  signed  "Diplomaticus"  was  writ- 
ten by  the  hand  of  the  British  Prime  Minister, 
Lord  Salisbury  himself. 

How  Mr.  Asquith's  Government  in  August 
1914  came  suddenly  to  extemporize  a  wholly 
different  view  of  England's  obligations  to  Bel- 
gium is  excellently  told  by  that  inveterate  diarist 
and  chronicler,  Mr.  Wilfred  Scawen  Blunt: 

The  obligation  of  fighting  in  alliance  with  France  in 
case  of  a  war  with  Germany  concerned  the  honour  of 
three  members  only  of  Asquith's  Cabinet,  who  alone 
were  aware  of  the  exact  promises  that  had  been  made. 

[46] 


These,  though  given  verbally  and  with  reservations  as 
to  the  consent  of  Parliament,  bound  the  three  as  a  matter 
of  personal  honour,  and  were  understood  at  the  Quai 
d'Orsay  as  binding  the  British  nation.  Neither  Asquith 
nor  his  two  companions  ^  in  this  inner  Cabinet  could 
have  retained  office  had  they  gone  back  from  their  word 
in  spirit  or  in  letter.  It  would  also  doubtless  have  en- 
tailed a  serious  quarrel  with  the  French  Government 
had  they  failed  to  make  it  good.  So  clearly  was  the 
promise  understood  at  Paris  to  be  binding  that  President 
Poincare,  when  the  crisis  came,  had  written  to  King 
George  reminding  him  of  it  as  an  engagement  made 
between  the  two  nations  which  he  counted  on  His 
Majesty  to  keep. 

Thus  faced,  the  case  was  laid  before  the  Cabinet,  but 
was  found  to  fail  as  a  convincing  argument  for  war. 
It  was  then  that  Asquith,  with  his  lawyer's  instinct, 
at  a  second  Cabinet  meeting  brought  forward  the  neu- 
trality of  Belgium  as  a  better  plea  than  the  other  to 
lay  before  a  British  jury,  and  by  representing  the  neu- 
trality-treaties of  1831  and  1839  as  entailing  an  obliga- 
tion on  England  to  fight  (of  which  the  text  of  the 
treaties  contains  no  word)  obtained  the  Cabinet's  consent, 
and  war  was  declared. 

Belgium  was  not  thought  of  by  the  British  Cabi- 
net before  2  August,  1914.  She  was  brought  in 
then  as  a  means  of  making  the  war  go  down  with 
the  British  people.  The  fact  is  that  Belgium 
was  thoroughly  prepared  for  war,  thoroughly  pre- 

1  Sir  E.  Grey  and  Lord  Haldane. 

[47] 


pared  for  just  what  happened  to  her.  Belgium 
was  a  party  to  the  military  arrangements  effected 
among  France,  England  and  Russia;  for  this  we 
have  the  testimony  of  Marshal  Joffre  before  the 
Metallurgic  Committee  in  Paris,  and  also  the 
record  of  the  "conversations"  that  were  carried 
on  in  Brussels  between  the  Belgian  chief  of  staff 
and  Lt.-Col.  Barnardiston.  On  24  July,  1914, 
the  day  when  the  Austrian  note  was  presented  to 
Serbia  (the  note  of  which  Sir  E.  Grey  had  gotten 
an  intimation  as  early  as  16  July  by  telegraph 
from  the  British  Ambassador  at  Vienna,  Sir  M. 
de  Bunsen),  the  Belgian  Foreign  Minister,  M. 
Davignon,  promptly  dispatched  to  all  the  Belgian 
embassies  an  identical  communication  containing 
the  following  statement,  the  significance  of  which 
is  made  clear  by  a  glance  at  a  map : 

All  necessary  steps  to  ensure  respect  of  Belgian  neu- 
trality have  nevertheless  been  taken  by  the  Govern- 
ment. The  Belgian  army  has  been  mobilized  and  is 
taking  up  such  strategic  positions  as  have  been  chosen 
to  secure  the  defence  of  the  country  and  the  respect'  of 
its  neutrality.  The  forts  of  Antwerp  and  on  the  Meusc 
have  been  put  in  a  state  of  defence. 

\\  Jt  was  on  the  eastern  frontier,  we  perceive, 
therefore — not  on  the  western,  where  Belgium 
might  have  been  invaded  by  France — that  all  the 

[48] 


available  Belgian  military  force  was  concentrated. 
Hence,  to  pretend  any  longer  that  the  Belgian 
Government  was  surprised  by  the  action  of  Ger- 
many, or  unprepared  to  meet  it;  to  picture  Ger- 
many and  Belgium  as  cat  and  mouse,  to  under- 
stand the  position  of  Belgium  otherwise  than 
that  she  was  one  of  four  solid  allies  under  definite 
agreement  worked  out  in  complete  practical  de- 
tail, is  sheer  absurdity. 


[49] 


IX 


If  the  official  theory  of  German  responsibility  were 
correct,  it  would  be  impossible  to  explain  the  Ger- 
man Government's  choice  of  the  year  1914  as  a 
time  to  strike  at  "an  unsuspecting  and  defenceless 
Europe."  The  figures  quoted  in  Chapter  III 
show  that  the  military  strength  of  Germany,  rel- 
atively to  that  of  the  French-Russian-English 
combination,  had  been  decreasing  since  1910.  If 
Germany  had  wished  to  strike  at  Europe,  she  had 
two  first-rate  chances,  one  in  1908  and  another  in 
1912,  and  not  only  let  them  both  go  by,  but  threw 
all  her  weight  on  the  side  of  peace.  This  is  in- 
explicable upon  the  theory  that  animates  the 
treaty  of  Versailles.  Germany  was  then  in  a  po- 
sition of  advantage.  The  occasion  presented  it- 
self in  1908,  in  Serbia's  quarrel  with  Austria  over 
the  annexation  of  Bosnia  and  the  Herzegovina. 
Russia,  which  was  backing  Serbia,  was  in  no  shape 
to  fight;  her  military  strength,  used  up  in  the 
Russo-Japanese  war,  had  not  recovered.  France 
would  not  at  this  time  have  been  willing  to  go  to 

[50] 


war  with  Germany  over  her  weak  ally's  commit- 
ments in  the  Danube  States.  Germany,  however, 
contented  herself  with  serving  notice  on  the  Tsar 
of  her  unequivocal  support  of  Austria;  and  this 
was  enough.  The  Tsar  accepted  the  fait  accom- 
\pU  of  the  annexation  of  Bosnia  and  the  Herze- 
govina ;  Serbia  retired  and  cooled  off ;  and  Turkey, 
from  whom  the  annexed  province  was  ravished, 
was  compensated  by  Austria.  It  is  not  to  the 
point  to  scrutinize  the  propriety  of  these  transac- 
tions ;  the  point  is  that  Germany  held  the  peace  of 
Europe  in  the  hollow  of  her  hand,  with  immense 
advantages  in  her  favour,  and  chose  not  to  close 
her  hand.  The  comment  of  a  neutral  diplomat, 
the  Belgian  Minister  in  Berlin,  is  interesting.  In 
his  report  of  i  April,  1909,  to  the  Belgian  For- 
eign Office,  he  says: 

The  conference  scheme  elaborated  by  M.  Isvolsky  and 
Sir  Edward  Grey;  the  negotiations  for  collective  repre- 
sentations in  Vienna ;  and  the  whole  exchange  of  ideas 
among  London,  Paris  and  Petersburg,  were  steadily 
aimed  at  forcing  Austria-Hungary  into  a  transaction 
which  would  strongly  have  resembled  a  humiliation. 
This  humiliation  would  have  affected  Germany  as 
directly  and  as  sensibly  as  Austria-Hungary,  and  would 
have  struck  a  heavy  blow  at  the  confidence  which  is  in- 
spired in  Vienna  by  the  alliance  with  Germany.  These 
machinations  were   frustrated  by  Germany's  absolutely 

[51] 


unequivocal  and  decided  attitude,  from  which  she  has 
never  departed  in  spite  of  all  the  urgings  with  which 
she  has  been  harassed.  Germany  alone  has  accomplished 
the  preservation  of  peace.  The  new  grouping  of  the 
Powers,  organized  by  the  King  of  England,  has 
measured  its  forces  with  the  alliance  of  the  Central 
European  Powers,  and  has  shown  itself  incapable  of 
impairing  the  same.  Hence  the  vexation  which  is  mani- 
fested. 

The  last  two  sentences  of  the  foregoing  seem  to 
show — putting  it  mildly — that  the  Belgian  Min- 
ister did  not  suspect  the  German  Government  of 
any  aggressive  spirit.  In  the  same  dispatch, 
moreover,  he  remarks: 

As  always,  when  everything  does  not  go  as  the  French, 
English  or  Russian  politicians  want  it  to,  the  Temps 
shows  its  bad  temper.     Germany  is  the  scapegoat. 

Again,  at  the  time  of  the  Balkan  War  in  1912, 
Germany  had  an  excellent  opportunity  to  gratify 
her  military  ambition,  if  she  had  any,  at  the  ex- 
pense of  an  "unsuspecting  and  unprepared  Eur- 
ope" ;  not  as  advantageous  as  in  1908  but  more  ad- 
vantageous than  in  1914.  Serbia's  provocations 
against  Austria-Hungary  had  become  so  great 
that  the  Austrian  Archduke  (assassinated  in  1914 
at  Sarajevo)  told  the  German  Emperor  person- 
ally that  they  had  reached  the  limit  of  endurance. 

[52] 


On  this  occasion  also,  however,  William  II  put 
himself  definitely  on  the  side  of  peace,  and  in  so 
doing  left  the  Austrian  Government  somewhat 
disappointed  and  discontented.  Another  neu- 
tral diplomat  reports  of  the  German  Foreign 
Minister  that 

whatever  plans  he  may  have  in  his  head  (and  he  has 
big  ideas),  for  winning  the  sympathies  of  the  young 
Balkan  Powers  over  to  Germany,  one  thing  is  absolutely 
certain,  and  that  is  that  he  is  rigidly  determined  to  avoid 
a  European  conflagration.  On  this  point  the  policy  of 
Germany  is  similar  to  that  of  England  and  France, 
both  of  which  countries  are  determinedly  pacifist. 

This  is  a  fair  statement  of  the  English  and 
French  position  in  1912.  There  was  a  great  re- 
vulsion of  feeling  in  England  after  her  close 
shave  of  being  dragged  into  war  over  Morocco 
and  her  sentiment  was  all  for  attending  to  certain 
pressing,  domestic  problems.  Besides,  it  was 
only  in  November,  1911,  and  only  through  the  in- 
discretion of  a  French  newspaper,  that  the 
British  public  (and  the  British  Parliament  as 
well)  had  learned  that  the  Anglo-French  agree- 
ment of  1904  had  secret  articles  attached  to  it, 
out  of  which  had  emanated  the  imbroglio  over 
Morocco;  and  there  was  a  considerable  feeling  of 
distrust  towards  the  Foreign  Office.    In  fact,  Sir 

[53] 


E.  Grey,  the  Foreign  Minister,  was  so  unpopular 
with  his  own  party  that  quite  probably  he  would 
have  had  to  get  out  of  ofBce  if  he  had  not  been 
sustained  by  Tory  influence.  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead  ex- 
pressed a  quite  general  sentiment  in  the  Review 
of  Reviews  for  December,  1911: 

The  fact  remains  that  in  order  to  put  France  in 
possession  of  Morocco,  we  all  but  went  to  war  with 
Germany.  We  have  escaped  war,  but  we  have  not 
escaped  the  national  and  abiding  enmity  of  the  German 
people.  Is  it  possible  to  frame  a  heavier  indictment 
of  the  foreign  policy  of  any  British  Ministry'?  The 
secret,  the  open  secret,  of  this  almost  incredible  crime 
against  treaty-faith,  British  interests  and  the  peace  of 
the  world,  is  the  unfortunate  fact  that  Sir  Edward  Grey 
has  been  dominated  by  men  in  the  Foreign  Office  who 
believe  all  considerations  must  be  subordinated  to  the 
one  supreme  duty  of  thwarting  Germany  at  every  turn, 
even  If  in  doing  so  British  interests,  treaty-faith  and 
the  peace  of  the  world  are  trampled  underfoot.  I 
speak  that  of  which  I  know. 

This  was  strong  language  and  it  went  with- 
out challenge,  for  too  many  Englishmen  felt  that 
way.  In  France,  the  Poincare-Millerand-Del- 
casse  combination  was  getting  well  into  the  sad- 
dle; but  with  English  public  opinion  in  this  not- 
ably undependable  condition,  English  support 
of  France,  in  spite  of  the  secret  agreement  binding 

[54] 


the  two  governments,  was  decidedly  risky.  There- 
upon France  also  was  ''determinedly  pacifist." 
Now  if  Germany  had  been  the  prime  mover  in 
"the  most  dangerous  conspiracy  ever  plotted 
against  the  liberty  of  nations,"  why  did  she  not 
take  advantage  of  that  situation'?  "^ 

Russia,  too,  was  "determinedly  pacifist"  in 
1912,  and  with  good  reason.  There  was  a  party 
of  considerable  influence  in  the  Tsar's  court  that 
was  strongly  for  going  to  war  in  behalf  of  Serbia, 
but  it  was  finally  headed  off  by  the  Foreign  Min- 
ister, Sazonov,  who  knew  the  state  of  public 
opinion  in  England  and  its  effect  on  France,  and 
knew  therefore  that  the  French-Russian-English 
alliance  was  not  yet  in  shape  to  take  on  large 
orders.  It  is  true  that  the  Poincare-Millerand- 
Delcasse  war-party  in  France  had  proof  enough 
in  1912  that  it  could  count  on  the  British  Gov- 
ernment's support;  and  what  France  knew,  Rus- 
sia knew.  Undoubtedly,  too,  the  British  Gov- 
ernment would  somehow,  under  some  pretext  or 
other,  possibly  Belgian  neutrality,  have  contrived 
to  redeem  its  obligations  as  it  did  in  1914.  But 
the  atmosphere  of  the  countr}^  was  not  favour- 
able and  the  thing  would  have  been  difficult.  Ac- 
cordingly, Sazonov  saw  that  lit  was  best  for  him 
to  restrain  Serbia's  impetuosity  and  truculence 

[55] 


r> 


for  the  time  being — Russia  herself  being  none  too 
ready — and  accordingly  he  did  so. 

But  how?  The  Serbian  Minister  at  Peters- 
burg says  that  Sazonov  told  him  that  in  view  of 
Serbia's  successes  "he  had  confidence  in  our 
strength  and  believed  that  we  would  be  able  to 
deliver  a  blow  at  Austria.  For  that  reason  we 
should  feel  satisfied  with  what  we  were  to  receive, 
and  consider  it  merely  as  a  temporary  halting- 
place  on  the  road  to  further  gains."  On  another 
occasion  ''Sazonov  told  me  that  we  must  work  for 
the  future  because  we  would  acquire  a  great  deal 
of  territory  from  Austria."  The  Serbian  Min- 
ister at  Bucharest  says  that  his  Russian  and 
French  colleagues  counselled  a  policy  of  waiting 
"with  as  great  a  degree  of  preparedness  as  possible 
the  important  events  which  must  make  their  ap- 
pearance among  the  Great  Powers."  How,  one 
may  ask,  was  the  Russian  Foreign  Office  able  to 
look  so  far  and  so  clearly  into  the  future?  If 
German  responsibility  for  the  war  is  funda- 
mental, a  chose  jugee^  as  Mr.  Lloyd  George  said 

\  it  is,  this  seems  a  strange  way  for  the  Russian 
Foreign  Minister  to  be  talking,  as  far  back  as 

•  1912.  But  stranger  still  is  the  fact  that  the  Ger- 
man Government  did  not  jump  in  at  this  junc- 
ture instead  of  postponing  its  blow  until   1914 

[56] 


when  every  one  was  apparently  quite  ready  to 
receive  it.  When  the  historian  of  the  future  con- 
siders the  theory  of  the  Versailles  treaty  and  con- 
siders the  behaviour  of  the  German  Government 
in  the  crisis  of  1908  and  in  the  crisis  of  1912,  he 
will  have  to  scratch  his  head  a  great  deal  to  make 
them  harmonize.  ^^ 


[57] 


X 


By  the  spring  of  1913,  the  diplomatic  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Allied  Danube  States  made  no 
secret  of  the  relations  in  which  their  Governments 
stood  to  the  Tsar's  Foreign  OfBce.  The  Balkan 
League  was  put  through  by  Russian  influence  and 
Russia  controlled  its  diplomacy.  Serbia  was  as 
completely  the  instrument  of  Russ^>J«^^P^0Lin!drfisJ^ 
now  the  instrument  of  France.  "If  the  Austrian 
troops  invade  Balkan  territory/'  wrote  Baron 
Beyens  on  4  April,  1913,  "it  would  give  cause  for 
Russia  to  intervene,  and  might  let  loose  a  uni- 
versal war."  Now,  if  Germany  had  been  plot- 
ting "with  ruthless,  cynical  determination,"  as 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  said,  against  the  peace  of  Eu- 
rope, what  inconceivable  stupidity  for  her  not  to 
push  Austria  along  rather  than  do  everything  pos- 
sible to  hold  her  back  I  Why  give  Russia  the 
benefit  of  eighteen  months  of  valuable  time  for 
the  feverish  campaign  of  "preparedness"  that 
she  carried  on*?  Those  eighteen  months  meant  a 
great   deal.     In   Februarv,    1914,    the   Tsar   ar- 

[58] 


ranged  to  provide  the  Serbian  army  with  rifles 
and  artillery,  Serbia  agreeing  to  put  half  a  million 
soldiers  in  the  field.  In  the  same  month  Russia 
negotiated  a  French  loan  of  about  $100  million 
for  improvements  on  her  strategic  railways  and 
frontier-roads.  During  the  spring,  she  made 
"test"  mobilizations  of  large  bodies  of  troops 
which  were  never  demobilized,  and  these  ''test" 
mobilizations  continued  down  to  the  outbreak  of 
the  war ;  and  in  April  Russian  agents  made  techni- 
cal arrangements  with  agents  of  the  British  and 
French  Admiralties  for  possible  combined  naval 
action. 

Yes,  those  eighteen  months  were  very  busy 
months  for  Russia.  True,  she  came  out  at  the 
end  of  them  an  "unprepared  and  unsuspecting" 
nation,  presumably,  for  was  not  all  Europe  un- 
prepared and  unsuspecting?  Is  it  not  so  nom- 
inated in  the  Versailles  treaty*?  One  can  not 
(help  wondering,  however,  how  it  is  that  Ger-  \ 
many,  "carefully,  skilfully,  insidiously,  clandes-  ? 

tinely   planning  in  'every   detail"    a  murderous 
attack  on  the  peace  of  Europe,  should  have  given       1/ 
Russia  the  inestimable  advantage  of  those  eight- 
een months.  v  . 


[59] 


XI 


Mr.  E.  D.  Morel,  editor  of  the  British  monthly, 
Foreign  Affahs,  performed  more  than  a  distin- 
guished service — it  is  a  splendid,  an  illustrious 
service — to  the  disparaged  cause  of  justice,  when 
recently  he  translated  and  published  in  England 
through  the  National  Labour  Press,  a  series  of 
remarkable  State  documents.^  This  consists  of 
reports  made  by  the  Belgian  diplomatic  repre- 
sentatives at  Paris,  London  and  Berlin,  to  the 
Belgian  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  covering  the 
period  from  7  February,  1905  to  2  July,  1914. 
Their  authenticity  has  never  been  questioned. 
They  have  received  no  notice  in  this  country; 
their  content  and  import  were  carefully  kept 
from  the  American  people  as  long  as  it  was  pos- 
sible to  do  so,  and  consequently  they  remain  un- 
known except  to  a  few  who  are  students  of  inter- 
national affairs  or  who  have  some  similar  special 
interest. 

1  Under   the   title    "Diplomacy   Revealed."     National    Labour 
Press.     8    and    9   Johnson's    Court,    London,    E.G.,   4,   England. 

[60] 


It  can  hardly  be  pretended  by  anyone  that 
Belgian  officials  had,    during  that  decade,   any 
particular    love    or    leaning    towards    Germany. 
The  Belgian  Foreign  Office  has  always  been  as 
free  from  sentimental  attachments  as  any  other. 
It  has  always  been  governed  by  the  same  motives 
that   govern   the   British,    French,    German   and 
Russian  Foreign  Offices.     Its  number,  like  theirs, 
was  number  one;  it  was  out,  first  and  last,  for 
the  interests  of  the  Belgian  Government,  and  it 
scrutinized  every  international  transaction  from 
the  viewpoint  of  those  interests  and  those  only. 
It  was  fully  aware  of  the  position  of  Belgium 
as  a  mere  "strategic  corridor"  and  battle-ground 
for  alien  armies  in  case  of  a  general  European 
war,  and  aware  that  Belgium  had  simply  to  make 
the  best  of  its  bad  outlook,  for  nothing  else  could 
be  done.     If  the  Belgian  Foreign  Office  and  its 
agents,  moreover,  had  no  special  love  for  Ger- 
many, neither  had  they  any  special  fear  of  her. 
They  were  in  no  more  or  deeper  dread  of  a  Ger- 
man invasion  than  of  a  British  or  French  invasion. 
In  fact,  in  1911,  the  Belgian  Minister  at  Berlin 
set  forth  in  a  most  matter-of-fact  way  his  be- 
lief that  in  the  event  of  war,  Belgian  neutrality 
would  be  first  violated  by  Great  Britain.^     These 

1  This  belief   received   some   corroboration  in   the   spring  of 

[61] 


observers,  in  short,  may  on  all  accounts,  as  far 
as  one  can  see,  be  accepted  as  neutral  and  dis- 
interested, with  the  peculiar  disinterestedness  of 
one  who  has  no  choice  between  two  evils. 

Well,  then,  under  the  circumstances  it  is  re- 
markable that  if  Germany  during  the  ten  years 
preceding  August,  1914,  were  plotting  against 
the  peace  of  the  world,  these  Belgian  observers 
seem  unaware  of  it.  It  is  equally  noteworthy 
that  if  Germany's  assault  were  unprovoked,  they 
seem  unaware  of  that  also.  These  documents  re- 
late in  an  extremely  matter-of-fact  way  a  con- 
tinuous series  of  extraordinary  provocations  put 
upon  the  German  Government,  and  moreover, 
they  represent  the  behaviour  of  the  German  Gov- 
ernment, under  these  provocations,  in  a  very 
favourable  light.  On  the  other  hand,  they  show 
from  beginning  to  end  a  most  profound  distrust 
of  English  diplomacy.  If  there  is  any  uncer- 
tainty about  the  causes  of  ill-feeling  between 
England  and  Germany,  these  Belgian  officials 
certainly  do  not  share  it.     They  regularly  speak 

1912,  when  in  the  course  of  military  "conversations,"  the 
British  Military  Attache,  Lieutenant-Colonel  Bridges,  told  the 
Belgian  Minister  of  War  that  if  war  had  broken  out  over  the 
Agadir  incident  in  1911,  the  British  Government  would  have 
landed  troops  in  Belgium  with  or  without  the  Belgian  Govern- 
ment's consent.  So  much  did  the  British  Govefnraent  think 
of  the  "scrap  of  paper !" 

[62] 


of  England's  jealousy  of  Germany's  economic 
competition,  and  the  provocative  attitude  to 
which  this  jealousy  gave  rise.  They  speak  of 
it,  moreover,  as  though  it  were  something  that 
the  Belgian  Government  were  already  well  aware 
of;  they  speak  of  it  in  the  tone  of  pure  common- 
place, such  as  one  might  use  in  an  incidental 
reference  to  the  weather  or  to  a  tariff-schedule 
or  to  any  other  matter  that  is  well  understood 
and  about  which  there  is  no  difference  of  opinion 
and  nothing  new  to  be  said.  This  is  all  the  more 
remarkable  in  view  of  the  fact  that  it  was  nom- 
inally to  save  Belgium  and  to  defend  the  sanctity 
of  Belgian  neutrality  that  England  entered  the 
war  in  August,  1914.  These  Belgian  agents  are 
invariably  suspicious  of  English  diplomacy,  as 
Mr.  E.  D.  Morel  points  out,  ''mainly  because 
they  feel  that  it  is  tending  to  make  the  war 
which  they  dread  for  their  country."  They  per- 
sistently and  unanimously  ''insinuate  that  if  left 
to  themselves,  France  and  Germany  would  reach 
a  settlement  of  their  differences,  and  that  British 
diplomacy  was  being  continually  exercised  to  en- 
venom the  controversy  and  to  draw  a  circle  of 
hostile  alliances  round  Germany."  This,  indeed, 
under  a  specious  concern  for  the  "balance  of 
power,"   has  been   the  historic   role   of   English 

[63] 


diplomacy.  Every  one  remembers  how  in  1866, 
just  before  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  Mr.  Mat- 
thew Arnold's  imaginary  Prussian,  Arminius 
von  Thunder-ten-Tronckh,  wrote  to  the  editor  of 
the  Pall  Mall  Gazette^  begging  him  to  prevail 
upon  his  fellow-countrymen  "for  Heaven's  sake 
not  to  go  on  biting,  first  the  French  Emperor's 
tail,  and  then  ours." 

On  18  February,  1905,  the  Belgian  Minister  in 
Berlin  reported  thus: 

The  real  cause  of  the  English  hatred  of  Germany  is 
the  jealousy  aroused  by  the  astonishing  development  of 
Germany's  merchant  navy  and  of  her  commerce  and 
manufactures.  This  hatred  will  last  until  the  English 
have  thoroughly  learned  to  understand  that  the  world's 
trade  is  not  by  rights  an  exclusively  English  monopoly. 
Moreover,  it  is  studiously  fostered  by  the  Times  and  a 
whole  string  of  other  daily  papers  and  periodicals  that 
do  not  stop  short  of  calumny  in  order  to  pander  to  the 
tastes  of  their  readers. 

At  that  time  the  centre  of  the  English  navy 
had  just  been  shifted  to  the  North  Sea,  to  the 
accompaniment  of  a  very  disturbing  and,  as  at 
first  reported,  a  very  flamboyant  speech  from  the 
Civil  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  Mr.  Lee.  Of  the 
sensation  thereby  created  in  Germany,  the  Belgian 
Minister  says: 

[64] 


HcO 


In  informing  the  British  public  that  Germany  does  not 
dream  of  any  aggression  against  England,  Count  Biilow 
[the  German  Chancellor]  said  no  more  than  what  is 
recognized  by  every  one  who  considers  the  matter  dis- 
passionately. Germany  would  have  nothing  to  gain 
from  a  contest.  .  .  .  The  German  fleet  has  been  created 
with  a  purely  defensive  object.  The  small  capacity  of 
the  coal-bunkers  in  her  High  Seas  Fleet,  and  the  small 
number  of  her  cruisers,  prove  besides  that  her  fleet 
not  intended   for  use   at  any   distance   from  the  coast. 


!-? 


On  the  other  hand,  he  remarks  in  the  same  re- 
port: 

It  was  obvious  that  the  new  disposition  of  the  English 
navy  was  aimed  at  Germany  ...  it  certainly  is  not  be- 
cause of  Russia,  whose  material  stock  is  to  a  great  ex- 
tent destroyed  and  whose  navy  has  just  given  striking 
proof  of  incompetence    [in  the  Russo-Japanese  war]. 

Such  is  the  tone  uniformly  adopted  by  these 
neutral  observers  throughout  their  reports  from 
1905  to  1914.  On  24  October,  1905,  the  Bel- 
gian Minister  in  Paris  wrote : 

England,  in  her  efforts  to  maintain  her  supremacy  and 
to  hinder  the  development  of  her  great  German  rival,  is 
evidently  inspired  by  the  wish  to  avoid  a  conflict,  but 
are  not  her  selfish  aims  in  themselves  bringing  it  upon 
us?  .  .  .  She  thought,  when  she  concluded  the  Japanese 
alliance  and  gradually  drew  France  into  similar  ties, 
that  she  had  found  the  means  to  her  end,  by  sufficiently 

[65] 


paralysing   Germany's  powers  as  to  make   war  impos- 
sible. 

This  view  of  the  Anglo-Japanese  alliance  is 
interesting  and  significant,  especially  now  when 
that  instrument  is  coming  up  for  renewal,  with 
the  United  States  standing  towards  England  in 
the  same  relation  of  economic  competitorship  that 
Germany  occupied  in  1905.  True,  Viscount 
Bryce  assured  the  Institute  of  Politics  at  Wil- 
liams College  last  summer  that  it  was  not  Ger- 
many's economic  rivalry  that  disturbed  England; 
but  on  this  point  it  would  be  highly  advantageous 
for  the  people  of  the  United  States,  while  there 
is  yet  time,  to  read  what  the  Belgian  Minister  in 
Berlin  had  to  say  on  27  October,  1905: 

A  very  large  number  of  Germans  are  convinced  that 
England  is  either  seeking  allies  for  an  attack  upon  Ger- 
many, or  else,  which  would  be  more  in  accordance  with 
British  tradition,  that  she  is  labouring  to  provoke  a  Con- 
tinental war  in  which  she  would  not  join,  but  of  which 
she  would  reap  the  profit. 

I  am  told  that  many  English  people  are  troubled  with 
similar  fears  and  go  in  dread  of  German  aggression. 

I  am  puzzled  upon  what  foundations  such  an  im- 
pression in  London  can  be  based.  Germany  is  absolutely 
incapable  of  attacking  England.  .  .  .  Are  these  people 
in  England  really  sincere  who  go  about  expressing  fears 
of   a    German    invasion    which    could    not    materialize*? 

[66] 


Are  they  not  rather  pretending  to  be  afraid  of  it  in 
order  to  bring  on  a  war  which  would  annihilate  Ger- 
many's navy,  her  merchant-fleet  and  her  foreign  com- 
merce"? Germany  is  as  vulnerable  to  attack  as  Eng- 
land is  safe  from  it ;  and  if  England  were  to  attack  Ger- 
many merely  for  the  sake  of  extinguishing  a  rival,  it 
would  only  be  in  accordance  with  her  old  precedents. 

In  turn  she  wiped  out  the  Dutch  fleet,  with  the  as- 
sistance of  Louis  XIV;  then  the  French  fleet;  and  the 
Danish  fleet  she  even  destroyed  in  time  of  peace  and 
without  any  provocation,  simply  because  it  constituted 
a   naval    force    of    some    magnitude. 

There  are  no  ostensible  grounds  for  war  between  Ger- 
many and  England.  The  English  hatred  for  Germany 
arises  solely  from  jealousy  of  Germany's  progress  in 
shipping,   in   commerce    and   in   manufacture. 

Baron  Greindl  here  presents  an  opinion  very 
different  from  that  in  which  the  majority  of 
Americans  have  been  instructed;  and  before  they 
accept  further  instruction  at  the  hands  of  Vis- 
count Bryce,  they  had  better  look  into  the  matter 
somewhat  for  themselves. 

Baron  Greindl  wrote  the  foregoing  in  October. 
In  December,  the  head  of  the  British  Admiralty, 
Sir  John  Fisher,  assured  Colonel  Repington  that 
"Admiral  Wilson's  Channel  fleet  was  alone  strong 
enough  to  smash  the  whole  German  fleet."  Two 
years  later,  Sir  John  Fisher  wrote  to  King  Ed- 

[67] 


ward  VII  that  "it  is  an  absolute  fact  that  Germany 
has  not  laid  down  a  single  dreadnaught,  nor  has 
she  commenced  building  a  single  battleship  or 
big  cruiser  for  eighteen  months.  .  .  .  England 
has  .  .  .  ten  dreadnaughts  built  and  building, 
while  Germany  in  March  last  had  not  even  be- 
gun one  dreadnaught  ...  we  have  123  de- 
stroyers and  forty  submarines.  The  Germans 
have  forty-eight  destroyers  and  one  submarine." 
Hence,  if  Sir  John  Fisher  knew  what  he  was 
talking  about,  and  in  such  matters  he  usually  did, 
he  furnishes  a  very  considerable  corroboration  of 
Baron  Greindl's  view  of  the  German  navy  up  to 
1905.  Looking  back  at  the  third  chapter  of  this 
book,  which  deals  with  the  comparative  strength 
of  the  two  navies  and  naval  groups  as  developed 
from  1905  to  1914,  the  reader  may  well  raise 
again  Baron  Greindl's  question,  ''Are  those  people 
in  England  really  sincere?" 


[68] 


XII 


Such  is  the  inveterate  suspicion,  the  melancholy 
distrust,  put  upon  English  diplomacy  by  these 
foreign  and  neutral  observers  who  could  see  so 
plainly  what  would  befall  their  own  country  in 
the  event  of  a  European  war.  Such  too,  was  the 
responsibility  which  these  observers  regularly  im- 
puted to  the  British  Foreign  Office — the  British 
Foreign  Office  which  was  so  soon  to  fix  upon 
the  neutrality  of  Belgium  as  a  casus  belli  and 
pour  out  streams  of  propaganda  about  the  sanctity 
of  treaties  and  the  rights  of  small  nations! 
Every  one  of  these  observers  exhibits  this  sus- 
picion and  distrust.  In  March,  1906,  when 
Edward  VII  visited  Paris  and  invited  the  dis- 
credited ex-Minister  Delcasse  to  breakfast,  the 
Belgian  Minister  at  Paris  wrote: 

It  looks  as  though  the  king  wished  to  demonstrate  that 
the  policy  which  called  forth  Germany's  active  inter- 
vention [over  Morocco]  has  nevertheless  remained  un- 
changed. ...  In  French  circles  it  is  not  over  well  re- 
ceived; Frenchmen  feeling  that  they  are  being  dragged 
against  their  will  in  the  orbit  of  English  policy,  a  policy 

[69I 


whose  consequences  they  dread,  and  which  they  generally 

/\  '    condemned   by   throwing   over   M.   Delcasse.     In   short, 

p  V    people  fear  that  this  is  a  sign  that  England  wants  so  to 

\V         envenom  the  situation  that  war  will  become  inevitable. 

On  lo  February,  1907,  when  the  English  King 
and  Queen  visited  Paris,  he  says:  "One  can 
not  conceal  from  oneself  that  these  tactics,  though 
their  ostensible  object  is  to  prevent  war,  are 
likely  to  arouse  great  dissatisfaction  in  Berlin  and 
to  stir  up  a  desire  to  risk  anything  that  may  en- 
able Germany  to  burst  the  ring  which  England's 
policy  is  tightening  around  her."  On  28  March, 
1907,   the  Belgian  charge  d'affaires  in  London 

.^  speaks  of  ''English  diplomacy,  whose  whole  effort 

is  directed  to  the  isolation  of  Germany."  On  the 
same  date,  by  a  curious  coincidence,  the  Minister 

\  at  Berlin,  in  the  course  of  a  blistering  arraign- 
ment of  French  policy  in  Morocco,  says:  "But 
at  the  bottom  of  every  settlement  that  has  been 
made,  or  is  going  to  be  made,  there  lurks  always 
that  hatred  of  Germany.  ...  It  is  a  sequence 
of  the  campaign  very  cleverly  conducted  with  the 
object  of  isolating  Germany.  .  .  .  The  English 
press  is  carrying  on  its  campaign  of  calumny 
more  implacably  than  ever.  It  sees  the  finger  of 
Germany  in  everything  that  goes  contrary  to 
English    wishes."     On    18   April,    1907,    Baron 

[70] 


Greindl  says  of  the  King  of  England's  visit  to 
the  King  of  Spain  that,  like  the  alliances  with 
Japan  and  France  and  the  negotiations  with 
Russia,  it  is  "one  of  the  moves  in  the  campaign 
to  isolate  Germany  that  is  being  personally 
directed  with  as  much  perseverance  as  success  by 
His  Majesty  King  Edward  VII."  In  the  same 
dispatch  he  remarks:  "There  is  some  right  to 
regard  with  suspicion  this  eagerness  to  unite, 
for  a  so-called  defensive  object.  Powers  who  are 
menaced  by  nobody.  At  Berlin  they  can  not 
forget  that  offer  of  100,000  men  made  by  the 
King  of  England  to  M.  Delcasse." 

On  24  May,  1907,  the  Minister  at  London  re- 
ported that  "it  is  plain  that  official  England  is 
pursuing  a  policy  that  is  covertly  hostile,  and 
tending  to  result  in  the  isolation  of  Germany,  and 
that  King  Edward  has  not  been  above  putting  his 
personal  influence  at  the  service  of  this  cause." 
On  19  June,  1907,  Count  de  Lalaing  again  writes 
from  London  of  the  Anglo-Franco-Spanish  agree- 
ment concerning  the  status  quo  in  the  Mediterra- 
nean region,  that  "it  is,  however,  difficult  to  im- 
agine that  Germany  will  not  regard  it  as  a  further 
step  in  England's  policy,  which  is  determined, 
'by  every  sort  of  means,  to  isolate  the  German 
Empire." 

[71] 


Perusal  of  these  documents  from  beginning  to 
end  will  show  nothing  to  offset  against  the  view 
of  English  diplomacy  exhibited  in  the  foregoing 
quotations;  nothing  to  modify  or  qualify  that 
view  in  any  way.  Baron  Greindl,  however, 
speaks  highly  of  the  British  Ambassador  at  Ber- 
lin, Sir  F.  Lascelles,  and  praises  his  personal  and 
unsupported  attempt  to  establish  friendly  rela- 
tions between  England  and  Germany.  Of  this 
he  says:  "I  have  been  a  witness  for  the  last 
twelve  years  of  the  efforts  he  has  made  to  accom- 
plish it.  And  yet,  possessing  as  he  justly  does 
the  absolute  confidence  of  the  Emperor  and  the 
German  Government,  and  eminently  gifted  with 
the  qualities  of  a  statesman,  he  has  nevertheless 
not  succeeded  very  well  so  far."  The  next  year, 
1908,  when  Sir  F.  Lascelles  was  forced  to  resign 
his  post.  Baron  Greindl  does  not  hesitate  to  say 
that  "the  zeal  with  which  he  has  worked  to  dis- 
pel misunderstandings  that  he  thought  absurd  and 
highly  mischievous  for  both  countries,  does  not 
fall  in  with  the  political  views  of  his  sovereign." 


[72] 


XIII 

King  Edward  VII  died  6  May,  1910.  During 
the  early  part  of  1911,  the  Belgian  Ministers  in 
London,  Paris  and  Berlin  report  some  indications 
of  a  less  unfriendly  policy  towards  Germany  on 
the  part  of  the  British  Government.  In  March 
of  that  year.  Sir  Edward  Grey  delivered  a  reas- 
suring speech  on  British  foreign  policy,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  debate  on  the  naval  budget.  The 
Belgian  Minister  in  Berlin  says  of  this  that  it 
should  have  produced  the  most  agreeable  impres- 
sion in  Germany  if  one  could  confidently  believe 
that  it  really  entirely  reflected  the  ideas  of  the 
British  Government.  It  would  imply,  he  says, 
that  "England  no  longer  wishes  to  give  to  the 
Triple  Entente  the  aggressive  character  which  was 
stamped  upon  it  by  its  creator,  King  Edward 
VII."  He  remarks,  however,  the  "slight  effect  pro- 
duced in  Berlin  by  Sir  E.  Grey's  speech,  and  infers 
that  German  public  feeling  may  have  "become 
dulled  by  the  innumerable  meetings  and  mutual 
demonstrations  of  courtesy  which  have  never  pro- 

[73] 


duced  any  positive  result,"  and  he  adds  signifi- 
cantly that  "this  distrust  is  comprehensible." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  at  the  time  this 
speech  was  delivered,  England  was  under  a  secret 
agreement  dating  from  1904  to  secure  France's 
economic  monopoly  in  Morocco.  England  was 
also  under  a  secret  obligation  to  France,  dating 
from  1906,  to  support  her  in  case  of  war  with 
Germany.  It  must  be  above  all  remembered  that 
this  latter  obligation  carried  with  it  a  contingent 
liability  for  the  Franco-Prussian  military  alliance 
that  had  been  in  effect  for  many  years.  Thus  if 
Russia  went  to  war  with  Germany,  France  was 
committed,  and  in  turn  England  was  committed. 
The  whole  force  of  the  Triple  Entente  lay  in 
these  agreements;  and  it  can  not  be  too  often 
pointed  out  that  they  were  secret  agreements. 
No  one  in  England  knew  until  November,  1911, 
that  in  1904  the  British  Government  had  bar- 
gained with  the  French  Government,  in  return 
for  a  free  hand  in  Egypt,  to  permit  France  to 
squeeze  German  economic  interests  out  of  Mo- 
rocco— in  violation  of  a  published  agreement, 
signed  by  all  the  interested  nations,  concerning 
the  status  of  Morocco.  No  one  in  England 
knew  until  3  August,  1914,  that  England  had  for 
several  years  been  under  a  military  and  naval 

[74] 


agreement  with  France  which  carried  the  enor- 
mous contingent  liability  of  the  Franco-Russian 
military  alliance.  No  matter  what  appeared  on 
the  surface  of  politics;  no  matter  how  many 
pacific  speeches  were  made  by  Sir  E.  Grey  and 
Mr.  Asquith,  no  matter  what  the  newspapers 
said,  no  matter  how  often  and  how  impressively 
Lord  Haldane  might  visit  Berlin  in  behalf  of 
peace  and  good  feeling;  those  secret  agree?nents 
held^  they  were  the  only  things  that  did  hold, 
and  everything  worked  out  in  strict  accordance 
with  them  and  with  nothing  else,  least  of  all 
with  any  public  understanding  or  any  statement 
of  policy  put  out  for  public  consumption.  It  was 
just  as  in  the  subsequent  case  of  the  armistice 
and  the  peace — and  this  is  something  that  has 
been  far  too  little  noticed  in  this  country.  The  / 
real  terms  of  the  armistice  and  of  the  peace  were  /^  , 
not  the  terms  of  the  Fourteen  Points  or  of  any 
of  the  multitudinous  published  statements  of 
Allied  war  aims.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  the 
precise  terms  of  the  secret  treaties  made  among 
the  Allied  belligerents  during  the  war,  and  made 
public  on  their  discovery  by  the  Soviet  Govern- 
ment in  the  archives  of  the  Tsarist  Foreign  Office. 
It  is  no  wonder  then,  that  the  German  Govern- 
ment was  not  particularly  impressed  by  Sir  E. 

[75] 


Y\ 


Grey's  speech,  especially  as  Germany  saw  France 
helping  herself  to  Moroccan  territory  with  both 
hands,  and  England  looking  on  in  indifferent 
complacency.  In  May,  191 1,  on  a  most  transpar- 
ent and  preposterous  pretext,  a  French  army  was 
ordered  to  march  on  Fez,  the  capital  of  Morocco. 
The  German  Government  then  informed  France 
that  as  the  Algeciras  Act,  which  guaranteed  the 
integrity  and  independence  of  Morocco,  had 
thereby  gone  by  the  board,  Germany  would  no 
longer  consider  herself  bound  by  its  provisions. 
In  June,  30,000  French  troops  "relieved"  Fez, 
occupied  it  and  stayed  there,  evincing  no  inten- 
tion whatever  of  getting  out  again,  notwith- 
standing that  the  ostensible  purpose  of  the  ex- 
pedition was  accomplished;  in  reality,  there  was 
nothing  to  accomplish.  Two  months  before  this 
coup  d'etat^  Baron  Greindl,  the  Belgian  Minister 
at  Berlin,  wrote  to  the  Belgian  Foreign  Office  as 
follows : 

Every  illusion,  if  ever  entertained  on  the  value  of 
the  Algeciras  Act,  which  France  signed  with  the  firm  in- 
tention of  never  observing,  must  long  since  have  vanished. 
She  has  not  ceased  for  one  moment  to  pursue  her  plans 
of  annexation ;  either  by  seizing  opportunities  for  pro- 
visional occupations  destined  to  last  for  ever  or  by  ex- 
torting concessions  which  have  placed  the  Sultan  in  a 

[76] 


position   of   dependence   upon   France,   and   which  have 
gradually  lowered  him  to  the  level  of  the  Bey  of  Tunis. 

A  week  later,  29  April,  Baron  Guillaume,  who 
had  succeeded  M.  Leghait  as  Belgian  Minister  in 
Paris,  reported  that  "there  are,  so  far,  no  grounds 
for  fearing  that  the  French  expedition  will  bring 
about  any  disturbance  of  international  policy. 
Germany  is  a  calm  spectator  of  events."  He 
adds,  significantly,  "England,  having  thrust 
France  into  the  Moroccan  bog,  is  contemplating 
her  work  with  satisfaction." 

France  professed  publicly  that  the  object  of 
this  expedition  was  to  extricate  certain  foreigners 
who  were  imperilled  at  Fez;  and  having  done 
so,  she  would  withdraw  her  forces.  The  precious 
crew  of  concessionaires,  profiteers,  and  dividend- 
hunters  known  as  the  Co  mite  du  Maroc  had  sud- 
denly discovered  a  whole  French  colony  living  in 
Fez  in  a  state  of  terror  and  distress.  There  was, 
in  fact,  nothing  of  the  sort.  Fez  was  never 
menaced,  it  was  never  short  of  provisions,  and 
there  were  no  foreigners  in  trouble.  When  the 
expeditionary  force  arrived,  it  found  no  one  to 
shoot  at.     As  M.  Francis  de  Pressense  says: 

Those   redoubtable   rebels   who  were  threatening   Fez 
had  disappeared  like  dew  in  the  morning.     Barely  did 

[77] 


a  few  ragged  horsemen  fire  off  a  shot  or  two  before  turn- 
ing around  and  riding  away  at  a  furious  gallop.  A  too 
disingenuous,  or  too  truthful,  correspondent  gave  the 
show  away.  The  expeditionary  force  complains,  he 
gravely  records,  of  the  absence  of  the  enemy;  the 
approaching  harvest  season  is  keeping  all  the  healthy 
males  in  the  fields !  Thus  did  the  phantom  so  dex- 
terously conjured  by  the  Comite  du  Maroc  for  the  benefit 
of  its  aims,  disappear  in  a  night. 

Nevertheless,  the  expeditionary  force  did  not, 
in  accordance  with  the  public  professions  of  the 
French  Government,  march  out  of  Fez  as  soon 
as  it  discovered  this  ridiculous  mare's  nest.  It 
remained  there  and  held  possession  of  the  Moorish 
capital.  What  was  the  attitude  of  the  British 
Government  in  the  premises?  On  2  May,  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  Sir  Edward  Grey  said  that 
"the  action  taken  by  France  is  not  intended  to 
^  alter  the  political   status  of  Morocco,   and  His 

\  *  Majesty's  Government  can  not  see  why  any  ob- 
jection should  be  taken  to  it." 

Germany  had  remained  for  eight  years  a  toler- 
ant observer  of  French  encroachments  in  Morocco, 
and  quite  clearly,  as  Baron  Greindl  observes  in 
his  report  of  21  April,  1911,  could  not  "after 
eight  years  of  tolerance,  change  her  attitude  un- 
less she  were  determined  to  go  to  war,  and  war 

[78] 


is  immeasurably  more  than  Morocco  is  worth." 
In  July,  1911,  however,  while  the  French  force 
of  30,000  was  still  occupying  Fez,  Germany  dis- 
patched a  gunboat,  the  "Panther,"  which  an- 
chored off  the  coast  of  Agadir. 


[79] 


XIV 

This  was  the  famous  ''Agadir  incjident,"  of  which 
we  have  ali  heard.  Did  it  mean  that  the  worm 
had  turned,  that  Germany  had  changed  her  atti- 
tude and  was  determined  to  go  to  war?  It  has 
been  so  represented;  but  there  are  many  difficult 
inconsistencies  involved  in  that  explanation  of  the 
German  Government's  act,  and  there  is  also  an 
alternative  explanation  which  fits  the  facts  far 
better.  In  the  first  place  the  "Panther"  was 
hardly  more  than  an  ocean-going  tug.  She  was 
of  looo  tons  burden,  mounting  two  small  naval 
guns,  six  machine-guns,  and  she  carried  a  com- 
plement of  only  125  men.  Second,  she  never 
landed  a  man  upon  the  coast  of  Morocco.  She 
chose  for  her  anchorage  a  point  where  the  coast 
is  practically  inaccessible ;  Agadir  has  no  harbour, 
and  there  is  nothing  near  it  that  offers  any  possible 
temptation  to  the  predatory  instinct.  No  more 
ostentatiously  unimpressive  and  unmenacing  dem- 
onstration could  have  been  devised.  Germany, 
too,  was  quite  well  aware  that  Morocco  was  not 

[80] 


worth  a  European  war;  and  as  Baron  Guillaume 
said  in  his  report  of  29  April,  "possibly  she  [Ger- 
many] is  congratulating  herself  on  the  difficulties 
that  weigh  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  French  Gov- 
ernment, and  asks  nothing  better  than  to  keep 
out  of  the  whole  affair  as  long  as  she  is  not 
forced  into  it  by  economic  considerations."  But 
the  most  significant  indication  that  Germany  had 
not  changed  her  attitude  is  in  the  fact  that  if 
she  were  determined  upon  war,  then,  rather  than 
two  years  later,  was  her  time  to  go  about  it. 
This  aspect  of  Germany's  behaviour  has  been 
dealt  with  in  a  previous  chapter.  It  can  not 
be  too  often  reiterated  that  if  Germany  really 
wanted  war  and  was  determined  upon  war,  her 
failure  to  strike  in  1908,  when  Russia  was  pros- 
trate and  France  unready,  and  again  in  1912, 
a  few  months  after  the  Agadir  incident,  when  the 
Balkan  war  was  on,  is  inexplicable.^ 

1  Critics  of  German  foreign  policy  are  hard  put  to  it  to  show 
that  she  was  ever  guided  by  territorial  ambitions;  which  is  an 
extremely  troublesome  thing  when  one  wants  to  believe  that  she 
proposed  in  1914  to  put  the  world  under  a  military  despotism. 
Can  any  one  show  where  in  a  single  instance  she  ever  de- 
manded anything  more  than  economic  equality  with  other 
nations,  in  a  foreign  market?  Certainly  she  never  demanded 
more  than  this  in  Morocco.  Ex-Premier  Caillaux  says  that 
his  predecessor  Rouvier  offered  Germany  a  good  Moroccan  port 
(Mogador)  and  some  adjoining  territory,  and  Germany  de- 
clined. 

[81] 


The  dispatch  of  the  "Panther"  gave  the  three 
Belgian  observers  a  great  surprise,  and  they  were 
much  puzzled  to  account  for  it.  Baron  Guil- 
laume's  thoughts  at  once  turned  to  England.  He 
writes  2  July : 

It  was  long  regarded  as  an  axiom  that  England  would 
never  allow  the  Germans  to  establish  themselves  at  any 
point  of  Moroccan  territory.  Has  this  policy  been  aban- 
doned; and  if  so,  at  what  price  were  they  bought  off? 

During  the  month  of  July,  while  waiting  for 
a  statement  from  the  British  Foreign  Office,  the 
Belgian  observers  canvassed  the  possibility  that 
Germany's  action  was  a  hint  that  she  would  like 
some  territorial  compensation  for  having  been 
bilked  out  of  her  share  in  the  Moroccan  market. 
But  the  interesting  fact,  and  for  the  purpose  of 
this  book  the  important  fact,  is  that  none  of  these 
diplomats  shows  the  slightest  suspicion  that  Ger- 
many was  bent  on  war  or  that  she  had  any 
thought  of  going  to  war.  Baron  Guillaume  says, 
28  July,  "undoubtedly  the  present  situation  wears 
a  serious  aspect.  .  .  .  Nobody,  however,  wants 
war,  and  they  will  try  to  avoid  it."  He  pro- 
ceeds : 

The  French  Government  knows  that  a  war  would  be 
the  death-knell  of  the  Republic.  ...  I  have  very  great 

[82] 


confidence  in  the  Emperor  William's  love  of  peace,  not- 
withstanding the  not  infrequent  air  of  melodrama  about 
what  he  says  and  does.  .  .  .  Germany  can  not  go  to 
war  for  the  sake  of  Morocco,  nor  yet  to  exact  payment 
of  those  compensations  that  she  very  reasonably  demands 
for  the  French  occupation  of  Fez,  which  has  become  more 
or  less  permanent.  On  the  whole  I  feel  less  faith  in 
Great  Britain's  desire  for  peace.  She  would  not  be 
sorry  to  see  the  others  destroying  one  another ;  only, 
under  those  circumstances,  it  would  be  difficult  for  her 
to  avoid  armed  intervention.  ...  As  I  thought  from 
the  very  first,  the  crux  of  the  situation  is  in  London. 

By  the  end  of  July,  a  different  conception  of 
Germany's  action  seemed  to  prevail.  It  began 
to  be  seen  that  the  episode  of  the  "Panther"  had 
been  staged  by  way  of  calling  for  a  show-down 
on  the  actual  intentions  and  purposes  of  the 
Triple  Entente;  and  it  got  one.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George,  "the  impulsive  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer," as  Count  de  Lalaing  calls  him,  made 
a  typical  jingo  speech  at  the  Mansion  House;  a 
speech  which  the  Prime  Minister,  Mr.  Asquith, 
and  Sir  Edward  Grey,  the  Foreign  Minister,  had 
helped  him  to  compose.  The  air  was  cleared  at 
once — England  stood  by  France — and  what  better 
plan  could  have  been  devised  for  clearing  the 
air  than  the  dispatch  of  the  "Panther"?  Ger- 
many stood  for  the  policy  of  economic  equality, 

[83] 


the  policy  of  the  open  door  to  which  all  the 
Powers  interested  had  agreed  in  the  case  of 
Morocco.  France,  at  the  end  of  a  course  of  con- 
tinuous aggression,  had  put  30,000  troops  in  oc- 
cupation of  the  capital  of  Morocco  on  an  infa- 
mously unscrupulous  pretext,  and  put  them  there 
to  stay,  and  the  British  Government  "could  not 
see  why  any  objection  should  be  taken  to  it." 
Germany,  on  the  other  hand,  anchored  an  in- 
significant gunboat  off  an  inaccessible  coast,  and 
without  landing  a  man  or  firing  a  shot,  left  her 
there  as  a  silent  reminder  of  the  Algeciras  Act 
and  the  principle  of  the  open  door — carefully  and 
even  ostentatiously  going  no  further — and  the 
British  Government  promptly,  through  the  mouth 
of  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  laid  down  a  challenge  and 
a  threat.  Thereupon  Germany  and  France  under- 
stood their  relative  positions;  they  understood,. 
even  without  Sir  E.  Grey's  explicit  reaffirmation 
of  27  November  of  the  policy  of  the  Triple  En- 
tente, that  England  would  stand  by  her  arrange- 
ments with  France.  Baron  Greindl  writes  from 
Berlin  6  December,  and  puts  the  case  explicitly: 

Was  it  not  assuming  the  right  of  veto  on  German 
enterprise  for  England  to  start  a  hue  and  cry  because  a 
German  cruiser  cast  anchor  in  the  roads  of  Agadir, 
seeing  that  she  had  looked  on  without  a  murmur  whilst 

[84] 


France  and  Spain  had  proceeded  step  by  step  to  conquer 
Morocco  and  to  destroy  the  independence  of  its  Sultan  *? 
England  could  not  have  acted  otherwise.  She  was 
tied  by  her  secret  treaty  with  France.  The  explanation 
was  extremely  simple,  but  it  was  not  of  a  sort  to  allay 
German  irritation. 


[85] 


XV 


Let  us  glance  at  British  political  chronology  for 
a  moment.  King  Edward  VII,  the  chief  factor 
in  the  Entente,  the  moving  spirit  in  England's 
foreign  alliances,  had  been  dead  a  year.  In 
December,  1905,  the  Liberal  party  had  come  into 
power.  In  April,  1908,  Mr.  H.  H.  Asquith  be- 
came Prime  Minister.  In  1910,  Anglo-German 
relations  were  apparently  improving;  in  July, 
1910,  Mr.  Asquith  spoke  of  them  in  the  House 
of  Commons  as  "of  the  most  cordial  character. 
I  look  forward  to  increasing  warmth  and  fervour 
and  intimacy  in  these  relations  year  by  year." 
The  great  question  was,  then,  in  1911,  whether 
the  Liberal  Government  would  actually,  when  it 
came  down  to  the  pinch,  stick  by  its  secret  cove- 
nant with  France.  Were  the  new  Liberals,  were 
Mr.  Asquith,  Lord  Haldane,  Sir.  E.  Grey,  Mr. 
Lloyd  George,  true-blue  Liberal  imperialists,  or 
were  they  not?  Could  France  and  Russia  safely 
trust  them  to  continue  the  Foreign  Office  policy 
that  Lord  Lansdowne  had  bequeathed  to  Sir  E. 

[86] 


Grey;  or,  when  the  emergency  came,  would  they 
stand  from  under'?  After  all,  there  had  been  a 
Campbell-Bannerman;  there  was  no  doubt  of 
that;  and  one,  at  least,  of  the  new  Liberals,  Mr. 
Lloyd  George,  had  a  bad  anti-imperialist  record 
in  the  South  African  war. 

The  Agadir  incident  elicited  a  satisfactory 
answer  to  these  questions.  The  Liberal  Govern- 
ment was  dependable.  However  suspiciously  the 
members  of  the  Liberal  Cabinet  might  talk,  they 
were  good  staunch  imperialists  at  heart.  They 
were,  as  the  theologians  say,  "sound  on  the  es- 
sentials." Baron  Greindl  wrote,  6  December, 
1911 : 

The  Entente  Cordiale  was  founded,  not  on  the  pos- 
itive basis  of  defence  of  common  interests,  but  on  the 
negative  one  of  hatred  of  the  German  Empire.  .  .  .  Sir 
Edward  Grey  adopts  this  tradition  without  reservation. 
He  imagines  that  it  is  in  conformity  with  English  in- 
terests. ...  A  revision  of  Great  Britain's  policy  is  all 
the  less  to  be  looked  for,  as  ever  since  the  Liberal  Min- 
istry took  office,  and  more  especially  during  the  last 
few  months,  English  foreign  policy  has  been  guided  by 
the  ideas  with  which  King  Edward  VII  inspired  it. 


[87] 


XVI 

Mr.  Lloyd  George's  speech  at  the  Mansion 
House  in  July,  1911,  after  the  German  gunboat 
"Panther"  had  anchored  off  the  Moroccan  coast, 
gave  an  immense  impulse  to  the  jingo  spirit  in 
France,  because  it  was  taken  as  definite  assurance 
of  England's  good  faith  in  seeing  her  secret  agree- 
ments through  to  a  finish.  M.  Caillaux,  the 
French  Premier,  appears  to  have  had  his  doubts, 
nevertheless,  inasmuch  as  the  British  Foreign 
Office  did  not  give  a  straight  reply  to  the  French 
Foreign  Office's  inquiry  concerning  British  action 
in  case  the  Germans  landed  a  force  in  Morocco. 
He  says: 

Are  we  to  understand  that  our  powerful  neighbours  will 
go  right  through  to  the  end  with  the  resolve  which  they 
suggest?  Are  they  ready  for  all  eventualities?  The 
British  Ambassador,  Sir  Francis  Bertie,  with  whom  I 
converse,  does  not  give  me  formal  assurances.  It  is  said, 
of  course,  that  he  would  see  without  displeasure  the  out- 
break of  a  conflict  between  France  and  Germany ;  his 
mind  works  in  the  way  attributed  to  a  number  of  leading 
British  officials  at  the  Foreign  Office. 

[88] 


M.  Caillaux  here  suggests  the  same  suspicion  of 
British  intentions  which  the  Belgian  diplomats  at 
London,  Paris  and  Berlin  intimate  continually 
throughout  their  correspondence  since  1905/  He 
accordingly  favoured  a  less  energetic  policy  to- 
wards Germany,  and  was  thrown  out  of  office. 
Count  de  Lalaing  reported  from  London,  15  Jan- 
uary, 1912,  that  the  revelations  which  provoked 
this  political  crisis  were  disagreeable  for  the 
English  Government.  "They  seem  to  prove," 
he  says,  "that  the  French  Premier  had  been  try- 
ing to  negotiate  with  Berlin  without  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  Minister  for  Foreign  Affairs  and  his 
other  colleagues,  and  this  is  naturally  disquiet- 
ing to  a  Government  whose  interests  are  bound 
up  with  those  of  France,  and  which  accordingly 
can  ill  tolerate  any  lapses  of  this  kind."  He 
adds: 

These  revelations  have  also  strengthened  the  im- 
pression that  M.  Caillaux  had  recently  favoured  an 
ultra-conciliatory  policy  towards  Germany,  and  this  im- 
pression was  felt  all  the  more  painfully  in  English  of- 
ficial circles,  as  the  full  extent  of  the  tension  between 
London  and  Berlin  caused  by  the  Cabinet  of  St.  James's 
loyal  behaviour  towards  the  Cabinet  at  Paris  had  hardly 

1  This  is   worth   noticing   since  M.   Caillaux  was  the   pioneer 
victim  of  the  charge  of  being  "pro-German." 

[89] 


been  grasped.  People  in  England  are  reluctant  to  face 
the  fact  that  they  have  been  'more  royalist  than  the  King,' 
and  have  shown  themselves  even  less  accommo- 
dating than  the  friend  they  were  backing.  .  .  .  Accord- 
ingly the  press  unanimously  hails  with  delight  the  de- 
parture of  M.  Caillaux,  and  trusts  that  sounder  tradi- 
tions may  be  reverted  to  without  delay. 

This  comment  on  the  position  of  M.  Caillaux 
is  one  of  the  most  interesting  observations  to  be 
found  in  these  documents. 


[90] 


XVII 

The  Balkan  war  took  place  in  1912,  and  the 
whole  history  of  the  year  shows  the  most  mighty 
efforts  of  European  politicians — efforts  which 
seem  ludicrous  and  laughable  in  spite  of  their 
tragic  quality — to  avert  with  their  left  hand  the 
war  which  they  were  bringing  on  with  their  right. 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  is  right  in  saying  that  no  one 
really  wanted  war.  What  every  one  wanted,  and 
what  every  one  was  trying  with  might  and  main 
to  do,  was  to  cook  the  omelette  of  economic  im- 
perialism without  breaking  any  eggs.  There  was 
in  all  the  countries,  naturally,  a  jingo  nationalist 
party  which  wanted  war.  In  Russia,  which  was 
then  busily  reorganizing  her  military  forces  which 
had  been  used  up  and  left  prostrate  by  the  war 
with  the  Japanese,  the  pan-Slavists  were  influ- 
ential and  vociferous,  but  they  were  not  on  top. 
In  England  there  was  a  great  popular  revulsion 
against  the  behaviour  of  the  Government  which 
had  so  nearly  involved  the  English  in  a  war 
against  Germany  the  year  before;  and  Mr.  As- 

[91] 


quith's  Government,  which  was  pacifist  in  ten- 
dency, was  meeting  the  popular  sentiment  in 
every  way  possible,  short  of  the  one  point  of  re- 
vealing the  secret  engagements  which  bound  it  to 
the  French  Governfnent  and  contingently  to  the 
Russian  Government.  Lord  Haldane  undertook 
an  official  mission  to  Berlin,  which  was  attended 
with  great  publicity  and  was  popularly  supposed 
to  be  of  a  pacificatory  nature;  and  really,  within 
the  limits  of  the  Franco-English  diplomatic  agree- 
ment, it  went  as  far  as  it  could  in  the  establish- 
ment of  good  relations.  In  fact,  of  course,  it 
came  to  nothing;  as  long  as  the  diplomatic  agree- 
ment remained  in  force,  it  could  come  to  noth- 
ing, nothing  of  the  sort  could  come  to  anything; 
and  the  diplomatic  agreement  being  guarded  as 
a  close  secret,  the  reason  why  it  must  come  to 
nothing  was  not  apparent.  The  German  Gov- 
ernment also  made  tremendous  efforts  in  behalf 
of  peace;  and  it  must  be  noted  by  those  who  ac- 
cept the  theory  upon  which  the  treaty  of  Ver- 
sailles is  based,  that  if  Germany  had  wished  or 
intended  at  any  time  to  strike  at  the  peace  of 
Europe,  now  was  the  moment  for  her  to  do  so. 
Instead,  the  German  Emperor  in  person,  and  the 
German  Government,  through  one  of  its  best  dip- 
lomatic agents.  Baron  von  Marschall,  met  every 

.'92] 


pacific  overture  more  than  half-way,  and  them- 
selves initiated  all  that  could  be  thought  of. 
"There  is  no  doubt,"  wrote  Baron  Beyens  from 
Berlin,  "that  the  Emperor,  the  Chancellor  and 
the  Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs  (von 
Kiderlen-Wachter)  are  passionately  pacifists." 
Baron  Beyens  again  says,  28  June,  1912,  "The 
Emperor  is  persistent  and  has  not  given  up  hopes 
of  winning  back  English  sympathies,  just  as  he 
has  succeeded  up  to  a  certain  point  in  obtaining 
the  confidence  of  the  Tsar,  by  the  force  of  his 
personal  attractions."  Those  who  believe  in  the 
extraordinary  notion  of  an  unprepared  and  un- 
suspecting Europe,  should  read  the  diplomatic 
history  of  the  year  1912,  when  all  the  chief  office- 
holders in  England  and  on  the  Continent  were 
struggling  like  men  caught  in  a  quicksand,  or 
like  flies  on  fly-paper,  to  avert,  or  if  they  could 
not  avert,  to  defer  the  inevitable  war. 

In  one  country,  however,  the  jingo  nationalist 
and  militarist  party  came  on  top;  and  that 
country  was  France.  M.  Caillaux  was  succeeded 
by  Raymond  Poincare;  and  in  January,  1913, 
Poincare  became  President  of  the  Republic.  Up 
to  1912,  the  people  of  France  were  increasingly 
indisposed  to  war  and  were  developing  a  con- 
siderable   impatience    with   militarism,    and    the 

[93] 


French  Government  was  responsive  to  this  sen- 
timent. It  knew,  as  Baron  Guillaume  remarked 
at  the  time  of  the  Agadir  incident,  that  "a  war 
would  be  the  death-knell  of  the  Republic."  M. 
Caillaux  seems  to  have  measured  the  feelings  of 
his  countrymen  quite  well.  Baron  Guillaume 
says  that  after  the  dispatch  of  the  "Panther," 
the  British  Cabinet's  first  proposal  was  that  the 
British  and  French  Governments  should  each 
immediately  send  two  men-of-war  to  Agadir;  and 
that  the  French  Cabinet  strongly  objected. 
Again,  he  says  in  his  report  of  8  July,  1911,  "I 
am  persuaded  that  Messrs.  Caillaux  and  de  Selves 
regret  the  turn  given  to  the  Moroccan  affair  by 
their  predecessors  in  office.  They  were  quite 
ready  to  give  way,  provided  they  could  do  so 
without  humiliation." 

The  speech  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  at  the  Man- 
sion House,  however,  which  was  taken  by  the 
French  (and  how  correctly  they  took  it  became 
apparent  on  3  August,  1914)  as  a  definite  assur- 
ance of  British  support  against  Germany,  gave 
the  militarist-nationalist  party  the  encourage- 
ment to  go  ahead  and  dominate  the  domestic  pol- 
itics of  France.  It  put  the  Poincare-Millerand- 
Delcasse  element  on  its  feet  and  stiffened  its  res- 
olution, besides  clearing  the  way  in  large  measure 

[94] 


for  its  predominance.  On  14  February,  1913, 
Baron  Guillaume  reports  from  Paris  thus : 

The  new  President  of  the  Republic  enjoys  a  popu- 
larity in  France  to-day  unknown  to  any  of  his  predeces- 
sors. .  .  .  Various  factors  contribute  to  explain  his 
popularity.  His  election  had  been  carefully  prepared 
in  advance;  people  are  pleased  at  the  skilful  way  in 
which,  while  a  Minister,  he  manoeuvred  to  bring  France 
to  the  fore  in  the  concert  of  Europe ;  he  has  hit  upon  some 
happy  phrases  that  stick  in  the  popular  mind. 

.  The  career  of  M.  Poincare,  in  fact,  and  his 
management  of  popular  sentiment,  show  many 
features  which  mutatis  mutandis^  find  a  parallel 
in  the  career  of  Theodore  Roosevelt.  Baron 
Guillaume  adds,  however,  this  extremely  striking 
observation  concerning  the  popularity  of  M.  Poin- 
care : 

But  above  all,  one  must  regard  it  as  a  manifestation 
of  the  old  French  chauvinistic  spirit,  which  had  for 
many  years  slumbered,  but  which  had  come  to  life  again 
since  the  affair  of  Agadir. 

In  the  same  communication  to  the  Belgian  For- 
eign Office,   Baron  Guillaume  remarks: 

M.  Poincare  is  a  native  of  Lorraine,  and  loses  no  op- 
portunity of  telling  people  so.  He  was  M.  Millerand's 
colleague,  and  the  instigator  of  his  militarist  policy. 

Finally,   the  first  word  that  he  uttered   at  the   very 

[95] 


moment  when  he  learned  that  he  was  elected  President  of 
the  Republic,  was  a  promise  that  he  would  watch  over  and 
maintain  all  the  means  of  national  defence. 

M.  Poincare  had  not  been  in  office  two  months 
when  he  recalled  the  French  Ambassador  at 
Petersburg,  M.  Georges  Louis,  and  appointed  in 
his  stead  M.  Delcasse.  Concerning  this  stupen- 
dous move,  Baron  Guillaume  reported  21  Feb- 
ruary, 1913,  to  the  Belgian  Foreign  Office  thus: 

The  news  that  M.  Delcasse  is  shortly  to  be  appointed 
Ambassador  at  Petersburg  burst  like  a  bomb  here  yester- 
day afternoon.  .  .  .  He  was  one  of  the  architects  of  the 
Franco-Russian  alliance,  and  still  more  so  of  the  Anglo- 
French  entente. 

Baron  Guillaume  goes  on  to  say  that  he  does 
not  think  that  M.  Delcasse' s  appointment  should 
be  interpreted  as  a  demonstration  against  Ger- 
many; but  he  adds: 

I  do  think,  however,  that  M.  Poincare,  a  Lorrainer,  was 
not  sorry  to  show,  from  the  first  day  of  entering  on  his 
high  office,  how  anxious  he  is  to  stand  firm  and  hold  aloft 
the  national  flag.  That  is  the  danger  involved  in  having 
M.  Poincare  at  the  Elysee  in  these  anxious  days  through 
which  Europe  is  passing.  It  was  under  his  Ministry  that 
the  militarist,  slightly  bellicose  instincts  of  the  French 
woke  up  again.  He  has  been  thought  to  have  a  measure 
of  responsibility  for  this  change  of  mood. 

[96] 


M.  Georges  Louis,  who  had  represented  the 
French  Government  at  Petersburg  for  three  years, 
was  a  resolute  opponent  of  the  militarist  faction 
in  France,  and  was  therefore  distinctly  persona 
non  grata  to  the  corresponding  faction  in  Russia. 
At  the  head  of  this  faction  stood  Isvolsky,  who  was 
a  friend  of  M.  Poincare  and  a  kindred  spirit; 
hence  when  M.  Poincare  became  Premier,  an 
attempt  was  made  to  oust  M.  Louis,  but  it  was 
unsuccessful.  M.  Delcasse,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
described  by  Mr.  Morel  as  ''the  man  identified 
more  than  any  other  man  in  French  public  life 
with  the  anti-German  war-party."  Mr.  Morel, 
in  commenting  on  the  appointment  of  M.  Del- 
casse quotes  the  following  from  a  report  sent  by 
the  Russian  Ambassador  in  London  to  the  Foreign 
Office  in  Petersburg.  It  was  written  four  days 
after  the  appointment  of  M.  Delcasse,  and  quite 
bears  out  the  impression  made  upon  the  Belgian 
agents.^ 

When  I  recall  his  [M.  Cambon,  the  French  Ambas- 
sador in  London]  conversations  with  me,  and  the  attitude 
of  Poincare,  the  thought  comes  to  me  as  a  conviction, 
that  of  all  the  powers  France  is  the  only  one  which,  not 
to  say  that  it  wishes  war,  would  yet  look  upon  it  with- 

1  But  perhaps  Count  Beuckendorf  was  pro-German,  too ! 

[971, 


out  great  regret. ...  She  [France]  has.  either  rightly 
or  wrongly,  complete  trust  in  her  army;  the  old  effer- 
vescing minority  has  again  shown  itself. 


[98I 


XVIII 

The  French  war-party,  represented  by  MM. 
Poincare,  Millerand  and  Delcasse,  came  into  pol- 
itical predominance  in  January,  1912,  and  con- 
solidated its  ascendancy  one  year  later,  when  M. 
Raymond  Poincare  became  President  of  the 
French  Republic.  All  through  1912  there  was 
an  immense  amount  of  correspondence  and  con- 
sultation between  the  French  and  Russian  Gov- 
ernments, and  all  through  1913  Russia  showed 
extraordinary  activity  in  military  preparation. 
In  England,  Mr.  Asquith's  Government  had  to 
face  a  strong  revulsion  of  popular  feeling  against 
the  attitude  of  its  diplomacy,  which  had  so  nearly 
involved  the  country  in  war  with  Germany  at 
the  time  of  the  Agadir  incident. 

As  always,  the  figures  of  expenditure  tell  the 
story;  and  the  history  of  1912-14  should  be  con- 
tinually illustrated  by  reference  to  the  financial 
statistics  of  the  period,  which  have  been  given  in 
earlier  chapters.  For  instance,  Russia,  which 
spent  (in  round  numbers)  £3^4  million  on  new 

[99] 


naval  construction  in  1911,  spent  £7  million  in 
1912,  £12  million  in  1913,  and  £13  million  in 
1914.  The  fact  that,  as  Professor  Raymond 
Beazley  puts  it,  in  the  ten  years  before  the  war, 
and  with  increasing  insistence,  Paris  and  St. 
Petersburg  spent  upon  armaments  £159  million 
m.ore  than  Berlin  or  Vienna,  ought  to  suffice  at 
least  to  reopen  the  question  of  responsibility. 

It  must  be  carefully  noted  that  by  the  spring  of 
1912,  the  Balkan  League,  which  was  engineered 
by  the  Russian  diplomat  Hartwig,  was  fully 
form.ed.  This  put  the  diplomacy  of  the  Balkan 
States  under  the  direct  control  of  the  Russian  For- 
eign Office.  It  now  became  necessary  for  the 
Russian  Foreign  Office  to  ascertain,  in  case  war 
between  Serbia  and  Austria  broke  out,  and  Ger- 
m.any  should  help  Austria  and  Russia  should  help 
Serbia,  whether  Russia  could  count  on  the  support 
of  France  and  England.  Russia  received  this 
assurance  in  secret,  and  the  terms  of  it  were  dis- 
covered by  the  Soviet  Government  in  the  archives 
of  the  Foreign  Office  and  published  in  1919. 
This  is  a  most  important  fact,  and  should  be  con- 
tinually borne  in  mind  in  connexion  with  the 
fact  that  the  war  was  precipitated  by  the  murder 
of  the  Austrian  Archduke  by  Serbian  officers, 
members  of  the  pan-Slavist  organization  fostered 

[100] 


and  encouraged  by  MM.  Isvolsky  and  Hartwig. 
On  9  August,  1912,  M.  Poincare,  then  Premier 
of  France,  made  a  visit  to  St.  Petersburg,  where 
he  was  joined  by  his  kindred  spirit,  M.  Isvolsky, 
who  was  then  the  Russian  Ambassador  at  Paris. 
It  was  the  usual  visit  of  State,  and  Russia  staged 
an  imposing  series  of  military  manoeuvres  in  M. 
Poincare's  honour.  But  the  really  important 
events  that  took  place  were  thesef\First,  a  naval 
agreement  was  made  between  France  and  Russia, 
whereby  France  agreed  to  concentrate  her  naval 
forces  in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean  in  order  to 
support  the  Russian  navy  in  the  Black  Sea.  This 
agreement  was  secret,  and  revealed  by  the  Soviet 
Government  in  1918.  Then,  in  the  same  month, 
the  Third  French  Naval  Squadron  was  trans- 
ferred from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Mediterranean. 
M.  Poincare  told  M.  Isvolsky  that  ''this  decision 
has  been  made  in  agreement  with  England,  and 
forms  the  further  development  and  completion  of 
the  arrangement  already  made  previously  between 
the  French  and  British  Staffs" — referring  to  the 
conference  of  Messrs.  Asquith  and  Churchill  and 
Lord  Kitchener  at  Malta,  the  month  before,  at 
which  the  new  disposition  of  the  English  and 
French  fleets  was  decided.  The  third  matter  of 
consequence   that   took  place   in  the   month  of 

[101] 


M- 


August  was  that  the  Russian  Government  began 
to  put  pressure  on  the  French  Government  to 
re-establish  the  Three  Years  Military  Service  law.    i 

So  much  for  August.  In  the  month  of  Sep- 
tember, M.  Poincare  gave  the  Russian  Foreign 
Minister,  M.  Sazonov,  assurance  that  if  Germany 
helped  Austria  in  a  struggle  in  the  Balkans,  and 
if  Russia  were  drawn  in  on  the  other  side,  France 
"would  not  hesitate  for  a  moment  to  fulfil  its 
obligations  towards  Russia."  In  the  same  month, 
M.  Isvolsky  had  an  interview  with  the  King  of 
England  and  Sir  Edward  Grey,  the  British 
Foreign  Minister,  in  which  both  King  George  and 
Sir  E.  Grey  assured  him  of  the  fullest  British 
co-operation  in  the  same  event.  M.  Isvolsky  re- 
ported to  the  Russian  Foreign  Office  at  St.  Peters- 
burg, that  ''Grey,  upon  his  own  initiative,  cor- 
roborated what  I  already  knew  from  Poincare — 
the  existence  of  an  agreement  between  France 
and  Great  Britain,  according  to  which  England 
undertook,  in  case  of  a  war  with  Germany,  not 
only  to  come  to  the  assistance  of  France  on  the 
sea,  but  also  on  the  Continent,  by  landing  troops." 
These  two  understandings  between  MM.  Poin- 
care and  Sazonov,  and  between  M.  Isvolsky  and 
Sir  E.  Grey,  were  secret,  and  nothing  was  known 
of  them  until    1919,   when   the  memoranda  of 

[102] 


them  were  published  by  the  Soviet  Government.^ 
A  train  of  gunpowder,  in  other  words,  had  been 
laid  from  Belgrade  through  Paris  and  London  to 
St.  Petersburg;  and  at  the  beginning  of  that  train 
was  the  highly  inflammable  and  inflammatory 
pan-Slavism,  organized  by  M.  Hartwig  with  the 
connivance  of  M.  Isvolsky.  A  spark  struck  in  the 
Balkans  would  cause  the  train  to  flash  into  flame 
throughout  its  entire  length. 

1  On  lo  March  of  the  following  year,  Mr.  Asquith,  replying 
to  a  question  in  the  Commons  from  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  denied 
that  England  was  under  an  "obligation  arising  owing  to  an 
assurance  given  by  the  Ministry  in  the  course  of  diplomatic 
negotiations,  to  send  a  very  large  armed  force  out  of  this  coun- 
try to  operate  in  Europe."  On  24  March,  he  made  similar 
denials  in  reply  to  questions  from  Sir  W.  Byles  and  Mr.  King. 
On  14  April,  Mr.  Runciman,  in  a  speech  at  Birkenhead,  denied 
"in  the  most  categorical  way"  the  existence  of  a  secret  under- 
standing with  any  foreign  Power!  On  3  May,  the  Secretary 
for  the  Colonies,  Mr.  Harcourt,  declared  publicly  that  he 
"could  conceive  no  circumstances  in  which  Continental  opera- 
tions would  not  be  a  crime  against  the  people  of  this  country." 
On  28  June,  the  under-Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs,  Mr. 
Acland,  declared  publicly  that  "in  no  European  question  were 
we  concerned  to  interfere  with  a  big  army."  On  i  July,  Lord 
Loreburn,  Lord  Chancellor  from  1906  to  1912,  said  "that  any 
British  Government  would  be  so  guilty  towards  our  country  as 
to  take  up  arms  in  a  foreign  quarrel  is  more  than  I  can  be- 
lieve." On  28  April,  1914,  and  again  on  11  June,  Sir  E.  Grey 
confirmed,  in  the  House  of  Commons,  Mr.  Asquith's  assertion, 
made  10  and  24  March,  1913,  of  British  freedom  from  engage- 
ments with  Continental  Powers. 

Yet,  curiously  the  professions  of  politicians  are  still  trusted, 
and  people  still  expect  something  from  their  machinations;  they 
expected  something  substantial  from  the  recent  conference  in 
Washington,  on  the  limitation  of  armaments,  for  instance — a 
striking  and  pathetic  example  of  the  strength  of  superstition. 

[103] 


XIX 

On  25  April,  1912,  the  German  Reichstag  put 
through  its  first  reading  a  bill,  with  only  per- 
functory debate,  for  an  increase  in  the  German 
army  and  navy.  This  measure  has  been  regu- 
larly and  officially  interpreted  as  a  threat.  Yet 
nearly  a  year  after,  on  19  February,  1913,  Baron 
Guillaume,  writing  from  Paris  about  the  pros- 
pects of  the  Three  Years  Service  bill,  reports 
to  the  Belgian  Foreign  Office  that  the  French 
Minister  of  War  "does  not  regard  the  measures 
taken  by  Germany  as  a  demonstration  of  hos- 
tility, but  rather  as  an  act  of  prudence  for  the 
future.  Germany  fears  that  she  may  one  day 
have  to  fight  Russia  and  France  together,  perhaps 
England  too;  and  then  any  help  that  Austria 
might  give  her  would  be  seriously  handicapped 
by  the  fact  that  the  Dual  Monarchy  [Austria- 
Hungary]  would  have  to  withstand  a  coalition  of 
Balkan  States." 

Naturally.     The    bill    was   presented    to    the 
Reichstag  in  April,  and  the  ''coalition  of  Balkan 

[104] 


States,"  M.  Hartwig's  Balkan  League,  had  al- 
ready completed  its  organization  in  February. 
/f'  Not  only  so,  but  the  very  first  step  taken  by  this 
exemplary  organization  provided  for  a  division 
of  spoils  in  the  event  of  a  successful  war  with 
Turkey;  and  six  months  after  the  organization  of 
the  League  was  concluded,  it  served  an  ultimatum 
upon  Turkey  over  Albania,  and  in  October  went 
to  war.  The  German  Government  could  quite 
''plainly  see  the  future  about  to  be  inaugurated 
through  this  consolidation  of  Balkan  policy  into 
the  hands  of  the  Russian  Foreign  OfBce — any  one 
even  an  attentive  reader  of  newspapers,  could  see 
it — and  it  could  see  the  vastly  increased  responsi- 
bility of  its  Austrian  ally,  in  case  of  a  quarrel, 
should  it  have  to  take  on  a  coalition  of  the  Balkan 
States  instead  of  a  single  one. 

Count  de  Lalaing  reported  from  London,  24 
February,  1918,  that  the  British  Foreign  Office 
took  the  same  sensible  view  of  the  German  mili- 
tary increases  as,  according  to  Baron  Guillaume, 
was  taken  by  M.  Jonnart.  "The  English  press," 
he  says,  "is  of  course  anxious  to  saddle  Germany 
with  the  responsibility  for  the  fresh  tension 
caused  by  her  schemes — a  tension  which  may  give 
Europe  fresh  reasons  for  uneasiness."  But,  he 
goes  on — 

['05] 


At  the  Foreign  Office  I  found  a  more  equitable  and 
calmer  estimate  of  the  situation.  They  see  in  the  re- 
inforcement of  the  German  armies  not  so  much  a  provo- 
cation as  an  admission  that  circumstances  have  weakened 
Germany's  military  position,  and  that  it  must  be  strength- 
ened. The  Berlin  Government  is  compelled  to  recognize 
that  it  can  no  longer  count  upon  being  supported  by  the 
whole  force  of  its  Austrian  ally,  now  that  a  new  Power, 
that  of  the  Balkan  Federation,  has  made  its  appearance 
in  South-eastern  Europe,  right  at  the  gates  of  the  Dual 
Empire.  .  .  .  Under  these  circumstances,  thd  Foreign 
Office  sees  nothing  astonishing  in  Germany's  finding  it 
imperative  to  increase  the  number  of  her  army  corps. 
The  Foreign  Office  also  states  that  the  Berlin  Government 
had  told  the  Paris  Cabinet  quite  frankly  that  such  were 
the  motives  for  its  action. 

The  same  view  was  publicly  expressed  by  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  himself  as  late  as  i  January,  1914, 
when  he  said: 

The  German  army  was  vital,  not  merely  to  the 
existence  of  the  German  Empire,  but  to  the  very  life  and 
independence  of  the  nation  itself,  surrounded,  as  Germany 
is,  by  other  nations,  each  of  which  possesses  armies  as 
powerful  as  her  own.  We  forget  that  while  we  insist 
upon  a  sixty-per-cent  superiority  (as  far  as  our  naval 
strength  is  concerned)  over  Germany  being  essential  to 
guarantee  the  integrity  of  our  own  shores,  Germany  her- 
self has  nothing  like  that  superiority  over  France  alone, 
and  she  has  of  course,  in  addition,  to  reckon  with  Russia 

[106] 


on  her  eastern  frontier.  Germany  has  nothing  which 
approximates  to  a  two-Power  standard.  She  has,  there- 
fore, become  alarmed  by  recent  issues,  and  is  spending 
huge  sums  of  money  on  the  expansion  of  her  military  re- 
sources. 

Those  are  the  words,  be  it  remembered,  of  the 
same  person  who  says  to-day  that  German  re- 
sponsibility for  the  war  which  broke  out  six 
months  after  he  had  made  the  foregoing  state- 
ment, is  a  chose  jugee!  The  statement  was  made, 
furthermore,  not  only  after  the  German  bill  of 
25  April,  1912,  but  after  the  bill  of  8  April,  1913, 
as  well,  which  fixed  the  peace-strength  of  the 
German  army  at  870,000. 

The  Three  Years  Service  law  passed  the  French 
Chamber  in  August,  1913,  after  a  passionate  popu- 
lar campaign.  Of  this  measure  Baron  Guillaume 
says  that  the  French  newspapers,  Le  Temps  in 
particular,  "are  wrong  in  representing  the  French 
Government's  plans  as  being  in  response  to 
measures  adopted  by  Germany.  Many  of  them 
are  but  the  outcome  of  measures  which  have 
long  been  prepared."  The  French  Minister,  M. 
Jonnart,  told  him  that  "we  know  very  well  what 
an  advantage  our  neighbour  [Germany]  has  in 
the  continual  growth  of  his  population;  still,  we 
must  do  all  that  lies  in  our  power  to  compensate 

[107] 


this  advantage  by  better  military  organization.'* 
Probably  this  view  of  the  Three  Years  Service 
law  was  the  view  held  by  all  save  the  relatively 
small  and  highly-integrated  war-faction;  and  in 
so  far  as  military  measures  are  ever  reasonable, 
this,  like  the  corresponding  measures  taken  in 
Germany,  must  be  regarded  as  reasonable.  As 
M.  Pichon  told  Baron  Guillaume,  "We  are  not 
arming  for  war,  we  are  arming  to  avoid  it,  to 
exorcise  it.  .  .  .  We  must  go  on  armmg  more  and 
more  in  order  to  prevent  war."  There  is  no 
reason  whatever  to  suppose  that  this  view  was 
not  sincerely  entertained  by  M.  Pichon  and  by 
many  others,  probably  by  a  majority  of  the  per- 
sons most  responsibly  concerned. 

But  the  consequences  of  the  Three  Years  Ser- 
vice law  were  contemplated  by  Baron  Guillaume 
with  great  apprehension.  He  reports  on  12  June, 
1913,  that  "the  burden  of  the  new  law  will  fall 
so  heavily  upon  the  population,  and  the  expendi- 
ture which  it  will  involve  will  be  so  exorbitant, 
that  there  will  soon  be  an  outcry  in  the  country, 
and  France  will  be  faced  with  this  dilemma: 
either  renounce  what  she  can  not  bear  to  forgo,  or 
else,  war  at  short  notice."  Of  the  militarist 
party  now  in  the  ascendancy,  he  says:  "They 
are  followed  with  a  sort  of  infatuation,  a  kind 

[108] 


of  frenzy  which  is  interesting  but  deplorable. 
One  is  not  now  allowed,  under  pain  of  being 
marked  as  a  traitor,  to  express  even  a  doubt  of 
the  need  for  the  Three  Years  Service." 

Public  opinion  was  evidently  confiscated  by  the 
Poincare-Millerand-Delcasse  group,  much  as  it 
was  in  the  United  States  in  1917  by  the  war- 
party  headed  by  Mr.  Wilson.  Baron  Guillaume 
uses  words  that  must  remind  us  of  those  days. 
"Every  one  knows,"  he  says,  "that  the  mass  of 
the  nation  is  by  no  means  in  favour  of  the  pro- 
jected reform,  and  they  understand  the  danger 
that  lies  ahead.  But  they  shut  their  eyes  and 
press  on." 


[109] 


XX 


The  train  of  powder,  however,  had  been  laid  by 
the  diplomatic  engagements.  Austria-Hungary 
and  Serbia  came  into  collision  in  the  spring  of 
1913  over  the  Scutari  incident.  In  December, 
1912,  M.  Sazonov  had  urged  Serbia  to  play  a 
waiting  game  in  order  to  "deliver  a  blow  at 
Austria.''  But  on  4  April,  1913,  Baron  Beyens 
reports  from  Berlin  that  the  arrogance  and  con- 
tempt with  which  the  Serbs  receive  the  Vienna 
Cabinet's  protests   over   Scutari 

can  only  be  explained  by  their  belief  that  St.  Petersburg 
will  support  them.  The  Serbian  charge  d'affaires  was 
quite  openly  saying  here  lately  that  his  Government 
would  not  have  persisted  in  its  course  for  the  last  six 
months  in  the  face  of  the  Austrian  opposition  had  they 
not  received  encouragement  in  their  course  from  the 
Russian  Minister,  M.  de  Hartwig,  who  is  a  diplomatist 
of  M.  Isvolsky's  school.  .  .  .  M.  Sazonov's  heart  is 
with  his  colleagues  who  are  directing  the  policy  of  the 
Great  Powers,  but  he  feels  his  influence  with  the  Tsar 
being  undermined  by  the  court-party  and  the  pan- 
Slavists.     Hence   his   inconsequent   behaviour. 


[110] 


The  military  activity  which  the  Russian  Gov- 
ernment displayed  in  1913  gives  interest  to  this 
estimate  of  M.  Sazonov's  position.  No  doubt 
to  some  extent  the  estimate  was  correct;  M. 
Sazonov,  like  Sir  E.  Grey,  was  probably,  when 
it  was  too  late,  much  disquieted  by  the  events 
which  marshalled  him  the  way  that  he  was  going. 
In  1914,  this  military  activity  gained  extraor- 
dinary intensity.  The  Russian  army  was  put 
upon  a  peace-footing  of  approximately  1,400,000, 
"an  effective  numerical  strength  hitherto  unprec- 
edented," said  the  St.  Petersburg  correspond- 
ent of  the  London  Times.  From  January  to 
June,  the  Russian  Government  made  immense 
purchases  of  war  material.  In  February,  it  con- 
cluded a  loan  in  Paris  for  the  improvement  of  its 
strategic  roads  and  railways  on  the  German 
frontier.  Russia,  as  was  generally  known  at  the 
time,  had  her  eye  on  the  acquisition  of  Constanti- 
nople ;  and  in  the  same  month,  February,  a  council 
of  war  was  held  in  St.  Petersburg  to  work  out 
"a  general  programme  of  action  in  order  to  secure 
for  us  a  favourable  solution  of  the  historical  ques- 
tion of  the  Straits."  In  March,  the  St.  Peters- 
burg newspaper  which  served  as  the  mouthpiece 
of  the  Minister  of  War,  published  an  article  stat- 

[111] 


ing  that  Russia's  strategy  would  no  longer  be  "de- 
fensive" but  "active."  Another  paper  spoke  of 
the  time  coming  when  "the  crossing  of  the  Aus- 
trian frontier  by  the  Russian  army  would  be  an 
imavoidable  decision."  In  the  same  month, 
Russia  raised  a  heavy  tariff  against  the  importa- 
tion of  German  grain  and  flour;  thus  bearing  out 
the  evidence  of  German  trade-reports  that  even 
at  this  time  Germany  was  still  exporting  grain 
to  Russia — a  most  extraordinary  proceeding  for 
a  nation  which  contemplated  a  sudden  declara- 
tion of  war  before  the  next  harvest.  In  the  same 
month,  the  Russian  Government  brought  in  mili- 
tary estimates  of  £97  million.  It  exercised  heavy 
pressure  on  the  French  Government  in  the  pro- 
tracted political  turmoil  over  the  maintenance  of 
the  Three  Years  Service  law.  In  April,  "trial 
mobilizations"  were  begun,  and  were  continued  up 
to  the  outbreak  of  the  war.  In  May,  M.  Sazonov 
informed  the  Tsar  that  the  British  Government 
"has  decided  to  empower  the  British  Admiralty 
Staff  to  enter  into  negotiations  with  French  and 
Russian  naval  agents  in  London  for  the  purpose 
of  drawing  technical  conditions  for  possible  action 
by  the  naval  forces  of  England,  Russia  and 
France."  In  the  same  month,  a  complete  mobil- 
ization of  all  the  reserves  of  the  three  annual 

[112] 


contingents  of  1907-1909  was  ordered  for  the 
whole  Russian  Empire,  as  a  "test,"  to  take  place 
in  the  autumn.  In  the  same  month  the  Russian 
Admiralty  instructed  its  agent  in  London,  Captain 
Volkov,  as  follows: 

Our  interests  on  the  Northern  scene  of  operations  re- 
quire that  England  keeps  as  large  a  part  of  the  German 
fleet  as  possible  in  check  in  the  North  Sea.  .  .  .  The 
English  Government  could  render  us  a  substantial  service 
if  it  would  agree  to  send  a  sufficient  number  of  boats  to 
our  Baltic  ports  to  compensate  for  our  lack  of  means  of 
transport,  before  the  beginning  of  war-operations. 

This  document,  revealed  by  the  Soviet  Govern- 
ment in  1919,  is  pretty  damaging  to  the  assump- 
tion of  an  "unprepared  and  unsuspecting  Europe" ; 
especially  as  Professor  Conybeare  has  given  pub- 
licity to  the  fact  that  "before  the  beginning  of 
war-operations"  those  English  boats  were  there, 
prompt  to  the  minute,  empty,  ready  and  waiting. 
In  June,  the  Russian  Ambassador  warned  the 
Russian  naval  staff  in  London  that  they  must 
exercise  great  caution  in  talking  about  a  landing 
in  Pomerania  or  about  the  dispatch  of  English 
boats  to  the  Russian  Baltic  ports  before  the  out- 
break of  war,  "so  that  the  rest  may  not  be  jeopard- 
ized."    On  13  June,  the:newspaper-org-an'of  th-iC' 

[113]       ■■■■■■■■'■'■ 


Russian  Minister  of  War  published  an  inspired 
article  under  the  caption:  "Russia  is  Ready: 
France  must  be  Ready." 

Two  weeks  later,  the  Austrian  heir-apparent, 
the  Archduke  Francis  Joseph,  was  murdered  at 
Sarajevo,  a  town  in  Bosnia,  by  Serbian  officers. 
The  murder  was  arranged  by  the  Serbian  Major 
Tankesitch,  of  the  pan-Slavist  organization  known 
as  the  Black  Hand;  and  this  organization  was 
fostered,  if  not  actually  subsidized,  by  the  Rus- 
sian Minister  at  Belgrade,  M.  Hartwig,  the  pupil 
and  alter  ego  of  M.  Isvolsky,  and  the  architect 
and  promoter  of  the  Balkan  League ! 


[iHl 


../ 


.**t 


DATE  DUE 

H^\ 

M  ft  ?n 

IP 

-^  0  ^U 

Jo 

.     r.^l 

V        r...^    - 

i 

i 

■ 

■ 

1 

■ 

GAYUORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.SA 

■ 

1 

^■■H 

■ 

COLUMBIA  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARIES 


0040252078 


9^0, ^\ 


Nrbi:^ 


'*" 


•„*  '4* 


4- 


O 


•  r\J 

^ 

0  r- 

0 

sj-   -0 

Q 

0^  2: 

Z 

Siijg^ 


